The Woodward Academy, Year 8

Chapter 11: April

David was working in his office, filling out paperwork, when he heard two office chairs slide across the floor.  He knew this meant that both of his clerks had just quickly risen to their feet.

This can't be good... David thought to himself with a sigh.  He rose far more sedately.

"Sir," Toni started to say from the outer office.

"Yeah, yeah," David replied.  "I'm coming."  He stepped into the outer office and stopped.

"Well, my estimation of just how bad this was, just went up..." David said.  Before him were Arkigo Schwarzkopf, the commander of Ark North; Arkigo Eisenpatten, the chief of the army; and the king.

"Toni, call Troop 42 to the conference room."

"Yes, sir," she said, grateful to have something to distract her from the amount of brass in the room.

"Jolene, could you get the gentlemen some refreshments?  His Majesty prefers mint tea.  I have no idea what the arkigos like."

"That's fine," Schwarzkopf told her.  Jolene nodded and departed for the cafeteria.

"Gentlemen, if you'll come this way..."  David led them across the hall into the conference room.  The wall map was still present, and it was kept updated with known positions and plans.  The room was magically locked to all without clearance.

"You didn't bring Christa with you this time?" David asked the king to pass the time while they waited for the others to arrive.

"I... well, to be honest, I didn't want her to know about this.  I don't want her to know... what you're going to do."

"Well, that sounds suitably ominous," David said.

"Can we get on with things?" Eisenpatten snapped.

"He called for his troop," the king reminded the arkigo.  "I think we can wait for them to arrive.  Assuming they're not in Senesty..." the king said, looking at David with a grin.

"Pithala, actually, on vacation," David replied with a similar smirk.

"Look, you may think this is funny, Stroud..."

"Stow it, Brad," the king snapped.  "First off, I started the joke.  Second off, given what's about to be discussed, David deserves about a mile's worth of leeway."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Eisenpatten replied.  What else could he say to his king?

It didn't take very long for Jolene to come in with the mint tea for the king and the generals.  She had also brought a hot chocolate for David.

"Thank you," David said to her sincerely, placing his hand gently on her arm.

"Thought you might need one, sir," she said with a tender smile for her boss.  She also set out two regular teas, which David knew were for Vivian and Giendia.  Both of whom arrived as Jolene was leaving.

"You wanted to see us, Da-SIRS!" Vivian snapped, suddenly coming to attention.  Giendia had to squeeze past her before she could do likewise.

"At ease," Schwarzkopf said.  David motioned his team to their spots at the table.

David then said, "So I assume we're here to discuss a new mission.  Where are we going this time?"

"This mission will be yours alone, Vocator," Eisenpatten said.

"You know, sir," David said, "if you're going to keep sending me out by myself, it would make logical sense to discharge Capadra Columbo and Soldier Dubnina."

Both Vivian and Giendia looked at David aghast.  Schwarzkopf replied, "Nice try, son, but no.  You may need them in the future."

"Yes, sir.  So, what am I tackling this time?"

Eisenpatten motioned to Schwarzkopf, who gestured to the map.  "Company Amber, of Battalion Emerald, of Group Corundum.  We have no idea what the hell they call their units, of course.  Those are our designations."

"Yes, sir," David acknowledged.  "What about Company AEC?"

"We want you to kill them," Eisenpatten said.

"Excuse me?" David replied, an eyebrow raised.

"Company AEC," Schwarzkopf said, "Is an elite unit.  They've thwarted several of our plans, causing major offensives to fall apart.  They have destroyed the 18th Battalion almost single-handedly.

"In five days, we start another major push.  If Company AEC is still active, the chances of that push succeeding are almost zero.  We need you to take them out."

"Just like that?" Vivian asked.  "Sir, David's just one man."

"No, he's not, Capadra," Eisenpatten said coldly.  "He's not a man at all.  He's a demighost.  And this mission is right up his alley."

"Just how many men are in Company AEC?" David asked.

"Four hundred fifty, give or take injuries, deaths and replacements," Eisenpatten said, after checking his notes.

"My god," Vivian breathed.

"If I go around ripping out four hundred fifty livers, sooner or later, someone's going to notice before I've finished," David objected.

"That is not what we have planned," Eisenpatten replied.

Schwarzkopf detailed the mission.  The color drained from Vivian's face, and Giendia looked decidedly ill.  David would have looked pale, as well... but he always looked pale.

"Sir..." David said, looking at the king.

"I know, David," the king said quietly.  "I know.  I wouldn't ask if we had any other options, you know that."

"And... are you writing up the pardon before or after the mission?" he asked seriously.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Eisenpatten snapped.

Vivian was the one who responded.  "You're asking him to kill men who are incapable of entering combat.  That's a war crime, Arkigo, and you should know that.  Sir."

"Trust me, Capadra, these men are fully capable of entering combat," Schwarzkopf replied.

"They'll be asleep!" Vivian snarled.  "That's like claiming a man lying unconscious in the infirmary is capable of entering combat just because he's recovering!  Sir, this is a crime, under both Callamandian law and Army regulation.  Orders or no orders, you are asking him to commit a major felony.  So his question is valid.  And, sirs, I should point out that you have implicated everyone in this room, including yourselves, for a conspiracy charge."

"For the sake of national security," the king said quietly, "The laws in question have been... temporarily... suspended.  No pardon will be necessary, no felonies have been, or will be, committed."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Vivian said.  David still looked very unhappy.

"Will you do this, David?" the king asked.

"You know I will, Your Majesty.  I have no choice.  We have no choice.  Well... I do have a choice.  I was offered a job in the Mirelian government, but..."

"What?" Eisenpatten gasped.

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, Arkigo.  My loyalty is to my king.  When did you want this operation to happen?"

"Two nights from tonight," Schwarzkopf said.

"Fine.  In that case, I'll be leaving here in about an hour."

"Why so soon?" the king asked.  "They're only about four hours away by peg-coach."

"I'm going home, sir.  I need time to think through this."

"That would be a breach of security.  You are to remain on base," Eisenpatten ordered sharply.  "Should you attempt to leave, you will be prevented."

David glared at the man, his fists balling tightly in sudden rage.  In an instant, all of the resentment, annoyance, and upset that David felt toward being called into army service, about being forced to deal repeatedly with people who seemingly had no idea what they were doing, yet expected him to take their orders, bubbled to the surface.  For this man, who had not managed a single winning campaign in the war, who had completely failed to properly perform his job, to be telling David that he couldn't do something as reasonable as going to see his family before being sent off to commit murder at the behest of his own government... It was more than he could take calmly.

  The king was about to reprimand Eisenpatten when David turned to him and, keeping his voice under very tight control, said, "You know, Dean Lengel was right."

"About?" the king queried, surprised.

"Back when I was a member of the Discipline Response Team, I had a lot of trouble with the school's Board of Discipline."

"We don't have time for y-" Eisenpatten started.

"Shut up," David snarled at him.  Everyone but the king looked shocked.  Eisenpatten did, however, stop talking.

"On more than one occasion," David continued to the king, "I found it necessary to put the Board of Discipline in its place.  After one such event, I told Dean Lengel that I didn't understand why they upset me so much.  She told me then that she was not surprised.  She realized, apparently better than I did at the time, that I only take shit from people when I have to."

"And..." the king said, a knowing smile appearing on his face.  He knew that what was about to happen was going to be very interesting.

"And I no longer have to," David said.  He suddenly turned on Eisenpatten, a full undead glare adorning his visage.

"Listen very closely, you motherfucking son of a bitch," David growled, the look on his face causing Eisenpatten to wither.  "I will do whatever I feel I need to do, and you can go fuck a wyvern for all I care."

Eisenpatten grew red, and opened his mouth to utter a retort.

"Shut your face, I'm not done!" David snarled.  "You're going to 'prevent' me from going home?  HOW?  You're going to somehow curtail my movement?  You have no means by which to stop me, you shit-for-brains.  The whole reason I'm tasked with this mission is BECAUSE I CANNOT BE STOPPED FROM GOING WHEREVER THE FUCK I PLEASE!

"So... what?  You going to have me arrested?  Bust me back down to Vigax?  Bust me all the way back down to Soldier?  Go ahead!  I do not give a shit.  I don't care about you, your rank, my rank, this job, or this army!  I am going to do this mission for two reasons.  First, my king asked me to, and I am both loyal to him, and trust that he wouldn't have asked if it wasn't necessary.  And two, because unfortunately there are thousands of normal folks out there wearing Army Green stuck following your idiotic leadership, and this will save some of their lives.

"I told the Rimohr Commission a couple years ago that I would not follow the leadership of an incompetent fool.  With that in mind, you shouldn't be surprised that I'm blowing off your supposed authority over me.  If you were at all competent, you fucknuts, we would not be in this mess!  So, you want to bust me, send someone else in to tackle the mission?  Go ahead!  Oh, wait, that's right, You can't!

"Which is why you're not going to do a goddamned thing to me for calling you a fuckwitted jackass right to your face.  Because, while I have exactly zero need for you, You... Need... Me," David said, jabbing his finger toward the general repeatedly, but not touching him.  "You can't arrest me, you can't throw me in the stockade, you can't do a fucking thing, because if you do, then this mission doesn't happen, hundreds or thousands of our troops die, and you lose the fucking war!

"Now, I am going home for a couple days to try to mentally prepare myself for committing mass murder.  I'm sorry you find that unacceptable, Sir.  It's going to happen anyway."

Eisenpatten was white as a sheet, enraged that someone as low as a vocator would call him out this way.

"If the king wasn't here, I'd take your head off."

David snorted.  "Go for it.  When was the last time your flabby ass saw combat?"

The arkigo growled and lunged at David.  David punched him square in the face, driving him right back into his chair and busting his nose.  Blood spewed down his face, and he looked in complete shock.

"That was the mildest thing I could do to you, asshole," David said.  "Come at me again, and the army will have a new chief, because you'll be lying in the infirmary for the next six months.  And, frankly, I don't care if the king is here to watch me wipe the floor with your ignorant ass."

"The army may have a new chief soon, anyway," the king said darkly.

Eisenpatten turned.  "Your Majesty!"

"Brad... you just told a man he has to personally kill hundreds of people.  And then you told him he couldn't go home to see his family beforehand.  You took a calm situation, did something supremely stupid out of nothing more than ego, and wound up with a very angry, very dangerous, subordinate.  A subordinate you've already been repeatedly told is struggling with... shall we say, anger control issues, and so should not be needlessly provoked.

"Then you were so utterly foolish as to try to attack him physically.  You've seen his file, you know what he could do to you, if he really wanted to... or, should I say, if he didn't mind actually killing you right in front of me, because I'm pretty sure, based on the look on his face, that he wants to tear out your liver.

"Your behavior, apart from being reprehensible, shows a clear lack of intellect and judgment, and a big helping of overriding self-importance.  Do you honestly believe that David leaving base is a security risk?  If he was going to tell someone something that we didn't want them to know...  We're sending him off on a mission alone!  He could tell them any goddamned thing he wanted to!  Frankly, if you couldn't reason that out, I'm not sure you deserve the job you've been given."

"Your Majesty!  I've been serving this army faithfully for thirty years!"

"Even a dog can be faithful.  That doesn't mean I want him making my decisions for me," the king said.  Eisenpatten blanched.

"Sir, I have been doing the very best that can be done throughout this war."

"Based on what?" the king retorted.  "Certainly not results.  David's entirely right: if this war had been handled properly, we would not be in the position we're in.  In the last two were wars, the numbers were about the same as they are now, and Callamandia won both wars handily.  How do you suppose they did that, Arkigo?"

"Sir, I..."

"Shut up.  Just... shut up.  David was absolutely right in what he said to you.  We do need him, and frankly, he deserves more gratitude from us than one of his superiors lording their position over him.  We will discuss your future later." 

Turning to David, the king said, "David... in preparation for this mission, and once it is finished, you have my personal permission to do whatever you need to do to get past this.  I'm sorry, I really am.  I'm not living up to my promise to you, to keep you away from this kind of thing."

"Neither of us really has a choice anymore, Your Majesty.  Thank you, anyway, for trying.  And for being concerned about it."

"You're my friend, David.  I don't like what I'm having to put my friend through.  I will tell the queen about this mission... after.  But... I don't think Christa should know what you've been forced to take on."

"She'll find out somehow, sir, but you're right, it would be better if she didn't."

"Just out of curiosity... were you really offered a job in the Mirelian government?"

"Not a specific post, Your Majesty," David said.  "But they did indicate that should Callamandia fall entirely, I would be welcome there."

"It's good to have friends," the king said.

"Yes, sir," David agreed.

"Don't suppose they offered me one?" the king asked lightly.

David chuckled.  "It wasn't brought up, sir."

"Ah, well.  I'm sure it wouldn't matter, if it came to that.  Anyway, we'll leave you to it.  Good luck, David."

"Thank you, sir.  Sir?"

"What is it?"

"If... it did come to that... are there plans for... at least Her Majesty and Christa?"

"What business is it of yours?" Eisenpatten demanded.

David got right in his face.  "I'm asking after the safety of friends of mine.  Is that okay with you, you self-serving little twit?  Maybe to you they're little labels on a file, or they're figureheads.  To me, they are Christa and Claire," David said, wincing because he wasn't sure he could call her that in front of the king.  "They are people, you miserable fuck, and I'd kind of like to know if they'll be safe in the future."

Eisenpatten didn't have a retort for that.  Seeing that the issue was closed, David turned back to the king, who was waiting to answer him.

"I'm afraid there aren't good plans in place, no.  It is expected that, if the kingdom falls that far, they would be captured with me."

"Maybe consider sending them elsewhere, so that's not likely to happen?"

"Like we need advice from you," Eisenpatten muttered, unable to stop himself.

"What would you like broken next, Brad?" David retorted as disrespectfully as he could possibly manage.  The king snorted in amusement.

"Did you have somewhere to suggest?" the king asked David.

"Earth comes to mind."

"Neither Claire nor Christa know anything about Earth."

David frowned.  "My only suggestion, then, is someplace that has been protected to a level that the Vrudenans cannot enter.  I'm not suggesting it as a location, sir, but my home has been enchanted to the point where they simply aren't getting in.  Something similar could be done to someplace else.  It only took my friends and I a few hours to do.  Weren't similar things done to your Cormatsen home, and the palace?"

"Things were done, but I'm told the protections would only last a few days.  Yours would last longer?"

"From what I've witnessed, Your Majesty, the protections on my home would stand up indefinitely.  Oh, an energy cannon might have made it through, but we know how to take care of those, don't we?"

The king grinned.  After a pause, he asked curiously, "Would my family be welcome in your home, David?"

"Welcome, absolutely, Your Majesty, but probably not comfortable.  My home is housing a few dozen refugees at this point.  Plus, despite its size and luxury, Pendergrast Manor is not at the level of comfort that your family is used to."

"To save their lives, I wouldn't much care about their comfort, David."

"Your Majesty... if you felt at any point that you wanted or needed to send them to my home, I would be honored to protect them for you... until I could get all of us out of the nation, of course."

"Of course.  This is something I have apparently not received good advice about."

"No offense, sir, but that seems to be a very common problem for you."

The king actually blushed.  "Yes, so it seems.  We've been... what's that Earth expression?  Behind the nine ball?"

"The eight ball, Your Majesty.  Behind the eight ball."

"Oh, right.  Anyway, we've been behind the eight ball from the start, and, apparently thanks to certain... 'local' issues, we haven't managed to improve our posture."

"Yes, sir.  I'll be honest, it never has made sense to me why we're having so much trouble.  The weres just don't have our level of magic use.  We should be able to take them down from a distance fairly easily, yet what fighting I have witnessed during the war has all been short-distance combat, or hand to hand."

"You never said anything about this before," the king objected.

"Sir, I'm a vocator.  I had assumed," David said, glaring at Eisenpatten, "that the person running things wasn't an idiot, and knew more about it than I did."

The king snorted.  "Yes, well... you know what assuming does," the king chided gently.

David grinned.

"Ultimately, though, this is my responsibility, and my fault for allowing it to get this bad without seeking other options."

"Your Majesty, do you have any military training?"

"No, it wasn't a concern when I was going through college, and I didn't serve in the army."

"And by the time it was relevant, you didn't have the time to learn," David said.

"Correct."

"Then, sir, how can you be reasonably expected to know when you're being told a load of horseshit by someone who is supposed to know what they're doing?  You were told that the best that could be done, was being done.  The blame doesn't lie with you for not knowing you were being lied to.  The blame lies in your other arkigos for not standing up to this shithead and telling him what a piss-poor leader he is."

"Let's see you do better!" Eisenpatten snarled.

"Arkigo, I am not a trained strategic officer of the Kingdom of Callamandia Army.  You are.  Having said that, the truth is, I could almost certainly do a better job than you're doing.  So could a trained drakee throwing darts at a map."

The king couldn't help but snicker at that.  Eisenpatten just glowered ineffectually.

 "In any case, David... Could you send me a listing of the enchantments you used on your home?  At the very least, we need to check them against what we're using, and see which is preferable."

"Of course, sir.  I'll have it couriered to you while I'm home.  And, sir, I'll also send along a list of the classes where those enchantments were taught, so that your advisors can explain to you what they were doing instead of paying attention in college."

"Thank you, David," the king said with a grin.  "I wish you well."

"Thank you, sir."

The two men shook hands, and then the king turned to leave the room.  "Out," he snapped at Eisenpatten, who had a mixed look of rage and fear on his face.  Schwarzkopf stopped before leaving the room.

"That was fun," he told David quietly, so the king and Eisenpatten wouldn't hear him.  "I've been waiting for someone to tell him off for months!  Never figured it'd be you...  Then again..."

"Yes, sir," David said with a grin.  "I do have an inability to keep my big mouth shut."

Schwarzkopf grinned.  "Yes, well...  As you rightly pointed out, us arkigos keeping our big mouths shut hasn't been a good idea.  Toeing the line has become a little too ingrained in us, I think.  Sometimes it takes someone from outside the system to tell it like it is."

"Yes, sir."

"In any case, I wish you luck with the mission, son.  I know it's a hell of a thing to ask, but... it's important."

"Yes, sir.  I know.  I'll get it done for you, Arkigo."

The arkigo nodded and left.  As he did, the lighthearted mood caused by the end of the conversation died, and the weight of the task ahead crashed back upon all of them.

"My god, David..." Vivian gasped.  Giendia let out the shudder she'd been holding in.

"Okay, you guys.  Yeah, it sucks.  That's why I need some... home-time to deal with it.  I need you to do something for me."

"You name it," Vivian said.

"I'm not going to be of a mind to do it, so I need you to do some research.  Find out what werewolf superstitions surrounding death are.  Any signs of death, any gods of death... anything like that at all.  If we... I... have to do this, let's fuck with their heads a little more while we're at it."

"Sure.  I'll swift it to you, so it won't matter where you are."

"Good.  I'm giving you both the week off.  Just... relax.  I'd invite you down to the house, but..."

"No, I think we've seen enough of Pendergrast Manor," Vivian said.

"Was there a problem?" David asked.

"Too many strangers... and too many of them aren't too thrilled with the army right now."

"So take off your uniform," David said.

"Then I'd be naked," Vivian grinned.

"And?" David retorted, leering at her.

Vivian blushed and giggled.

"It was mostly that we just didn't feel comfortable.  Especially Giendia, being the only non-human present.

"What do you mean?  Bispy's there..."

"Dragons make me more uncomfortable than people do," Giendia said with a frown.

"I make you uncomfortable?" David asked, surprised.

"No.  You're a friend.  You could be an awk, and I'd be comfortable with you.  But strange people... yeah, I feel kind of skittish."

"Oh.  Sorry.  Well, whatever.  You guys do whatever you want until I get back.  I will mark that in the order book, so no one gives you shit over it."

"Thanks.  David... are you going to be all right?" Vivian asked seriously.

"I highly doubt it," David replied honestly.  "But we'll worry about that later.  Just... get me that research, please."

"Sure.  Oh, and, by the way..."

"Yeah?"

"It was fun watching you take him apart.  I'm glad you've never been that mad at me."

David smirked, and then Vivian gave him a kiss.  As she was leaving the room, Giendia came over to him.  "Please be careful how you do this.  I know they can't hurt you... but you can hurt you..."

"I know what you're saying," David told her.

"I love you, David," she said, and kissed him for a long time.

When they parted, he held on to her.  "Giendia... this is speaking friend to friend now... what do you see for our relationship going forward?  Like, say after the war?"

"I don't know," she said.  "I don't think we can really live together... well, not in any traditional way, I mean...  so I guess probably... just what we've been doing."

"Are you okay with that?" David asked.  "Wouldn't you rather have a family?"

"I can't have a family, David.  I don't like centaur guys... that way, so I'm not going to live with one.  That means no baby centaurs for me.  Do you not want me anymore?" she asked tearily.

"Oh, that's not it, no.  I'm happy with our relationship.  It's just... with everything that's going on at home, and here, and... I'm just trying to figure out where I fit in with everyone around me."

"With a few modifications, I can show you where you fit in with me..." Giendia said with a grin and a wink.  And then she blushed strawberry, for having said it out loud.  David chuckled.

"Lean down here," he told her.  She did, and the two of them kissed for another long moment.  When they separated, he said, "I love you, too.  Thank you for being my friend.  I do enjoy when we have sex, but your friendship has been far more important to me."

"Me, too," she replied.  The two hugged for a minute, and then finally they let go.

"I need to get some stuff done before I go.  You... can go help Vivian, I guess.  Or you can go challenge Jack to centaur chess."

"He won't take the bait.  I think someone warned him," Giendia said, eyeing David.

"Wasn't me.  Hell, it took me three weeks before I realized you were fucking with me the whole time.  I wasn't about to clue in anyone else!"

Giendia laughed.  The game was not called "Centaur Chess".  It was actually called "Conundrum."  The thing about Conundrum was that there were almost no rules, at the start of the game, except for the movements of the pieces.  The goal was to add rules as the game went along, without redefining any previous rules, in order to give yourself an advantage.  Centaurs often used it to mess with those not in the know, but always in a friendly way.  Giendia was supremely good at this game. 

 "David!" Zyla gasped.  "What are you doing here?" After a moment, a horrible thought came to her mind.  "Did someone die?"

"Not yet," David said.  "Can I come in?"

"Of course, yes, sorry... you just... are you okay?"

"No.  Not even close.  I'll explain later, but I really need to not talk about it right now, okay?"

"Sure.  Grace is taking a nap, so whatever you want to do."

David paused for a long moment, and then he asked, "Would you mind if I went and lie down with her?  I think I need that level of... innocence... right now."

"Of course.  She'd love that.  David..." Zyla said, coming close.  She put her arms around him and held him.  She could tell he was upset.  After a long embrace, she let him go.

"Do you know how long you'll be here?"

"Just overnight.  I mean, if that's okay."

"You know you don't need to ask at this point," Zyla chided.  "Go on and lie down.  I'll prepare dinner."

"Thanks."

David went into Grace's room and lay down beside her on his side.  He stared at her, trying to let his mind blank out.  On the way here, the immensity of the task he was supposed to perform had really hit him.  He'd actually had to stop on the road for several minutes and let the horror of it wash out of his system.

But it wasn't gone entirely.

He didn't know what being here would accomplish, if anything.  It was just the only place he could think of that might help, somehow.

Grace, sensing his presence, woke up.

"Uncle David?" she asked, confused.  He wasn't prone to taking naps with her.

"Hey, Gracie," he said very quietly.  "Mind if I take a nap with you?"

"'kay," she said.  She scooted over and wrapped her arms around his neck.  It was the first hug she'd given him in recent memory that didn't threaten to require a chiropractor.  In seconds, she was asleep again.

David wrapped his arms around his goddaughter, closed his eyes, and just breathed.

Zyla woke up in the middle of the night, not sure what had disturbed her sleep.  She expected to be alone, though David had slept in her bed.  He had been far too distraught for them to do anything intimate, but she hadn't wanted him to spend the night by himself.

She discovered, however, that he was still in bed with her.  He was sitting up, his back against the headboard, his knees pulled up to his chest with his arms wrapped around them, and his eyes staring off into the distance.  What had awakened her was that he was rocking ever so slightly back and forth.

"David?" she asked quietly.  She pulled herself up into a sitting position and took a closer look at him.  She couldn't decipher the expression she saw on his face.

Slowly, he turned his face to look at her.  She realized the look on his face was a mix of despair and fear.

"What is it?" Zyla asked urgently.  "What's going on?"

"I have... a mission," David said.  His voice sounded ethereal.  Zyla would have no way to know, but it was the same voice that had taken over David after the death of Lise, and the punishment of her defiler.

Oh, god, what could be this bad? Zyla asked herself.

"Can you tell me... anything?"

"I have to... kill," David said.

"You're a soldier," Zyla offered quietly.  "That's your job."

David turned to her.  "I have to kill a lot."

"How many is a lot?" Zyla asked, cringing inwardly before he answered.

"Hundreds."

Zyla gasped.  "They can't!  They can't really expect you... by yourself?"

"They didn't ask me to fight," David said.  "They want me to kill.  My enemy will not be able to fight back."

"That's... that's murder," Zyla hissed.

"Yes," David said.

"You can't!" Zyla urged.

"There's no choice.  Hundreds will die, one way or the other.  This merely makes it the enemy, instead of us."

"But... to make you... How can they?"

"I shouldn't tell you this... they have no choice.  Things are very bad for us."

"Have they pushed further into Callamandia?"

"It's not about distance.  It's about manpower.  We're running out of it.  Soon, we simply won't have enough people to stop them with."

"How... soon?" Zyla asked.

David shrugged.  "Not my department."

"You... so... you haven't done this yet..."

"No.  Night after tomorrow.  Please, you didn't hear that."

"Of course not, David.  But... I mean, that just makes me ask... why did you come here?"

"Where else should I have gone?" David asked.  It seemed to her as if he was actually confused by her question.

"Home?" she offered.

David put his head back against the wall and closed his eyes.  "Home isn't as comforting," he said quietly.

Zyla squeezed the tears out of her eyes, and then moved against David, wrapping her arms around him.  He slid his one arm out from between them and slid it around her back to hold her closer.

Like that, they both fell back to sleep.

"Jailla, I need you to do something as part of the mission.  It's not crucial if you can't, but it will aid the effect."

"What do you need me to do?" Jailla asked.

"I need you to see if you can get all of the crows and ravens in the area to flock to the base at sunrise, and just sit and stare, for about an hour or so."

"What is the point?" Jailla asked curiously.

"Werewolves believe that crows and ravens are harbingers of death.  The base guards are the only ones who will survive tonight.  I want them scared shitless."

"Gathering them shouldn't be difficult.  David, about this mission..."

David sighed.  "What is it?"

"Are you sure you want to go through with this?"

"No, I'm quite sure I don't.  That's not an option if I want to save a lot of people from a lot of death."

"You will be causing a lot of people a lot of death," Jailla pointed out.

"Yes, but they will be enemies.  If I don't do this, the people dying will be friends."

"True.  But what of your conscience?"

"I'm not sure he and I are on speaking terms anymore," David said.

Jailla squawked quietly in distress.

"Now, go on.  I have to get started.  It's only three hours before sunrise, and I have to be done by the time the sun comes up."

Jailla winged off, and David faded to invisibility and walked onto the base.

The horror of the plan didn't come from its goriness or its violence.  The plan was horrific because of just exactly how easy it would be to reproduce, over and over again.

Fifty thousand weres left in their army... was the thought running through David's mind.  Could he do this task a hundred times, and not go completely mad?

He entered the first barracks tent.  In here were about twenty men, snoring away, blissfully unaware of what was about to happen to them.

In the darkness of the tent, David faded back to solid form.  This was dangerous, but also necessary.  He conjured a bucket out of his Conjuring Room, into his hand.  He then made himself a ghost, thus ghosting the bucket, as well.  He turned himself invisible, which left only a disembodied ghostly bucket floating in mid-air.  Should any were wake up and see this, surely they would be terrified... while they lived.

In the bucket were balls of ice.  They were about an inch across.  They had remained frozen because the Conjuring Room acted like a stasis field, and so nothing would change while in there.  Likewise, in ghost form, the heat of the room would not act on the ice.  It would remain a frozen ball until it became solid again, and only then would it begin to melt.  Before it did, however, it would have completed its gruesome task.

Taking a deep breath, David began his work.  He stepped up to the first were, pulled one of the ice balls out of the bucket, and inserted it deep into the were's chest, making sure to leave it inside the were's heart.  Once he was sure of its placement, he moved on to the next were.  And the next.  It didn't take long for all twenty weres in the tent to be sabotaged.

David moved on to the next tent, and another twenty weres.  On and on he went, placing his ice balls in each victim.  The last tents were, of course, smaller, as they held the leadership, all of whom had their own private tents.  In all, it took David two and a quarter hours to begin the process of wiping out an entire were company.

David walked out of the camp, invisible still.  Only when he had once again reached the spot where he had last spoken to Jailla did he reappear, but still in ghost form.

Jailla soon joined him, sitting on a branch nearby.

"Were you able to get their cooperation?" David asked quietly.

"Yes.  They will come."

"I hope the illusion doesn't scare them too badly," David said.

"Illusion?"

"The one I'm going to place over the camp."

"Ah.  You... planted the items?"

"Yes."

"Have you..."

"They're all still alive," David said.

"Are you waiting for something in particular?" Jailla asked gently.

"Yeah.  Me to wake up from this nightmare," David replied.

Jailla ruffled his feathers and stretched in a show of sympathy.  "Perhaps if you simply got it over with..." he offered.

"Jailla... I'm going to feel this.  And I don't mean in the emotional, 'I'm going to feel bad about it,' way.  I mean in the, 'I'm a Diviner, and the death of hundreds of people a few hundred yards away is going to pound through me like a giant kettle drum,' kind of way."

Jailla chirped in understanding.  "Still, that can't be changed.  Unless you start walking quickly now... you could perhaps get far enough away to lessen the impact..."

"I think I'd probably have to walk a dozen miles to be clear of the... emotional blast, or whatever you'd call it."

"And you don't have that much time."

"No.  Sunrise is in twenty minutes.  I'd barely get a mile in that amount of time."

"Still... since there is nothing you can do to ease that... perhaps don't make yourself wait for it?"

"I'm... kind of hoping that not being in charge of the exact timing might make things a little easier, later on."

"But you know it will happen when the sun rises..."

"Yeah, but I can't control if the sun rises or not."

"There is that.  So... what will you do while you wait?"

"Close my eyes and pretend I'm back in bed, with Zyla holding me, and this nightmare not going on."

"Your feelings for her seem to have bloomed rather quickly," Jailla said.

"Not my feelings, just my display of them.  This has been building for months, I just didn't say anything."

"Why did you want to hide it from me?" Jailla asked, slightly hurt.

"Wasn't hiding it from you, as such.  But you know how my love life has gone: every time I talk about a difficult relationship, it just gets worse."

Jailla chirped in understanding.  "And do you think this one will get worse?"

"Probably," David said morosely.

Jailla ruffled his feathers in discontent, but said no more about it.  The two then stood together in silence, waiting.

When the moment arrived, as the sun peeked over the horizon, the first things that happened were several hundred screams of pain.  As the ice balls solidified inside of each were's heart, and as the heart continued to try to beat, the heart muscle was ripped to shreds by the huge foreign body within.  This caused an immediate heart attack and severe pain, leading to the screams.  David hadn't anticipated this, but it didn't hurt the plan in any way.  He looked at the camp, to see that the guards were already looking around in distress at the hundreds of ravens and crows that were lining every branch in sight, and perching on top of most of the tents.

Taking out his wand, David cast a charm.  Suddenly, the sky over the camp turned blood red, casting a crimson hue over everything.  A deep, loud growl filled the camp, echoing back and forth.  Appearing here and there were ghostly shapes of dire wolves, blood dripping from their mouths, moving between the tents, along walkways, half-seen and ethereal.  Some walked right through tent walls, and the continued screaming gave life to the guards' superstitions.  Many of them ran into the forest, away from the camp.  Others stood, frozen in terror.

Suddenly, David collapsed to his knees and grabbed his head.

"David!" Jailla cried, flapping down onto his shoulder, now that he was solid.  "What is it?"

"Death," David groaned in anguish.  "Oh, god..." David said.  He vomited repeatedly as, for several minutes, the torment of dying souls washed over him.

Finally, David spit several times, and then shakily rose back to his feet.  The illusions had all ended when David had collapsed, and the guards were coming back to the base.  Now the investigation would start.  David didn't need to stay for that. He knew that when the weres tried to figure out what had happened, there wouldn't be any evidence for them to find.  The heart damage would seem to be pure magic... or a malevolent death god who was angry with their behavior.

"Let's get the hell out of here," David said to Jailla.

Slowly, they walked away from the base.

"I really am Death," David said, mostly to himself.  "The infernal spirit come to collect souls."

"That is a banshee's job, David, not yours," Jailla said.

"Yeah?  Well, I just gave them a shitload of work to do this morning, didn't I?" David said sardonically.  Jailla ruffled his feathers.

After a little while of walking, Jailla asked, "David... did you feel that kind of pain last year?"

"Last year?"

"When you sabotaged the energy cannons.  Hundreds died in those explosions..."

"Oh.  No.  Their deaths were too quick, they didn't have time to know it was coming.  These weres... they had plenty of time to realize they were dying.  It's the emotion of the event that causes the problem."

"I see.  And... how are you feeling now?"

"I'm not."

Jailla didn't say anything, but the completely lifeless tone of that response worried him greatly.

 "You look like hell," Zyla said when she opened the door.

"Nice to see you, too," David said with a wan smile.

Zyla pulled him into the house and closed the door, then she wrapped her arms around him and held him tightly.  After a while, she leaned back and kissed him.  He kissed her softly, his hands on her hips.

When they finally came up for air, David looked around.  "Where's Grace?  I figured she'd be yelling at you by now, to give her her turn."

Zyla chuckled and grinned.  "She's off with Janine and Lena, playing at the park again."

"Why didn't you go with them?" he asked.

Zyla just picked up the AutoCAD, which was on the table right next to the door.  Obviously, she'd been carrying it around.  She just showed it to him.

"David Stroud - Traveling - Unwell," it said.

David looked, nodded, then handed it back.

"Obviously you're physically fine, so..." Zyla said, leading him to talk about it.

"The unwellness is in my soul, not my body."

"Come in the kitchen.  I'll make tea."

David followed her, and sat down at the counter.  "First off, why does it still say 'traveling'?" Zyla asked.

"Because I'm not staying for very long.  I need to get back to base."

"So... why come here?"

David sighed.  "Do you not want me here?"

"You know better than that," she replied, somewhat testily.

"Right now, I don't know much of anything," David said.

Zyla frowned.  "I'm sorry.  Can you tell me about the mission at all?"

David shrugged.  "Not much point in hiding it now.  The offensive has already started... or it was supposed to, anyway.

"They needed to have a company of elite werewolves... removed from battle," David said carefully.  "But defeating them in battle, wasn't working.  So they sent me to take care of it."

"How?" she asked.

"Before I tell you that, please, understand these were my orders, not my choice.  Right down to the way it was done, that was defined by my orders."

Zyla nodded as she handed him his tea.

After taking a sip, he described how he had made the ice balls, and then how he had carried them, and then about placing them inside each body.

"Then, the sun came up, they solidified, and... no more were company."

"It can't have been as clean as that... not for what you look like," Zyla pressed.

"It really was... I mean, the actual physical part of the mission was very easy.  That is actually part of my problem.  It was so easy.  Doing it again would be simple.  Doing it another dozen times would be simple.

"But afterward, sooner or later you have to go to sleep."

"Nightmares?" Zyla asked quietly.

"I've had nightmares before, from things I've done in the Rimohrs, or from the battle with The Clan at the school... they don't even come close to this.  Did you take Divination at school?"

"One semester of it.  I had no aptitude."

David nodded.  "When you've taken Advanced Divination... you can feel emotions around you, you can sense people.  I use that in personal fighting all the time.  But the death of so many people, all in one place at one time..."  David shuddered hard and gasped, the horror of it still with him.  Zyla reached out and took his hand, grasping it firmly.

"I just hope it worked," David said finally.

Zyla frowned and sipped at her tea.

"Can I ask you what might be an uncomfortable question?" David asked after a long moment of silence.

Zyla snorted.  "Have we been asking any other kind lately?"

David grinned.  "Not really."

"What's your question?"

"What happened to you at college?  You never talk about it, and Joe said you wouldn't even tell him about your school days."

Zyla frowned.  "It was... unpleasant."

"What happened?"

For a long moment, Zyla said nothing, and David figured she wasn't going to tell him, either.  Finally, she took a deep breath, and started.

"When I went to Woodward, I started at the same time as my best friend, Trieste.  We even ended up rooming together.

"We remained great friends, even taking the same classes... until our fourth year, when we both met Kevin.  Trieste was immediately infatuated with Kevin.  I thought he was pretty hot, too.  But since she was actively going after him, I just stayed in the background.

"Problem was, Kevin decided he wanted to date me instead of Trieste.  She had been trying to get him to take her out for long enough that I was pretty sure he wasn't ever going to, so I told him yes.  She... didn't take that so well."

"What did she do?" David asked.

"It started out with little things... pranks, stealing homework papers, having other kids trip me and shoot spit-balls at me... things like that."

David nodded.  He could sympathize.

"Well, Kevin and I were a pretty good couple, so I wasn't going to let that kind of petty garbage interfere.  Trieste saw that, and so she started upping the ante.  She destroyed one of my textbooks, started changing answers in my homework to mess up my grades... she tried to get me caught 'cheating' once, but that backfired because I was working on something else when she 'caught' me..."

"The dean didn't do anything?"

"Oh, Trieste was very good at what she did.  She could never be pointed to as the culprit."

David grunted.  He knew all about that.

"Well, even that stuff didn't make me break up with Kevin... even though Trieste had told me it would all stop if I did.  I really liked Kevin, and we'd been going together for more than six months by this point.

"Then..." Zyla trailed off, and David reached over and took her hand.  She squeezed his hand and took a deep breath.

"One night, after I'd gone to sleep, she... she came into my room, used a spell to hold me down, and she raped me with a dildo."

David moved around the counter and pulled Zyla into his arms, as he could tell she was barely holding it together.  Zyla shuddered against him for long moments, trying to keep her emotions in check.

"I assume you told the dean about that," David said.

"While I was pretty sure it was her, I couldn't see anything.  She'd thrown a pillow over my face before I even woke up.  She never got on top of me, never said a word to me, she just... kept ramming it into me over and over again.  With no evidence, what could Dean Lengel do?"

David growled, and nodded.  He hugged Zyla tightly.

"I started locking my bedroom door after that, but by a week later, I was still so paranoid that I asked the dean to move me to a different room.  She did, so at least that was resolved...

"But then, less than a week after that, Trieste killed Buster."

"Who was Buster?"

"My familiar.  He was a rabbit.  One day, I found him just outside the trees on the terrace, just lying in the grass.  When Dean Lengel questioned Trieste, she claimed that a tree limb must have fallen on him.  But his neck was broken, without any other injuries... and there were no tree limbs lying nearby."

Tears were flowing down Zyla's face now, and David rubbed her back and hair, trying to comfort her as best he could.

Through soft sobs, she continued, "My grades slipped badly for quite a while after that.  I was just barely able to pull myself together for long enough to get my citizenship."

"So Woodward Academy is as unpleasant a place for you as it was for Joe," David said, frowning.

"No, not really. I don't blame the school itself for that.  The teachers, for instance, were fantastic to me, and Dean Lengel was as helpful as she could be.  It was just that Trieste..."

"Made sure it wasn't possible to figure out who had done any particular prank," David said for her.

"Yes.  How did you-"

"The story is familiar, and let's leave it at that," David replied.  He held her more tightly.  "I'm sorry it was like that for you, Angel."

The two commiserated for awhile before they separated.  David said, "I really should go."

"Why did you come back here?  Really?" Zyla asked.

"To see you," David replied.  "To let you know I was..." David snorted before he said, "okay.  To... maybe feel a little better."

"Do you?" she asked.

"Any day with you in it is a better day," David said.  "No matter how crappy it is otherwise."

Zyla smiled at him.  They stopped at the door to say good-bye.

"I love you," David said to her.

Zyla smiled softly at him, ran her hand along his cheek, and then kissed him strongly.  The two stayed that way for quite a while before parting.

"Best if you just didn't mention to Grace that I was here," David offered.

Zyla nodded.  "Do you know when you'll be back this way?"

David shook his head.  "I have no missions that I'm aware of, so... maybe this weekend.  Maybe not.  I'll just have to see."

"Please take care of yourself, David."

"Doing what I can," he told her.

They kissed again for a short while, then David left.  Zyla leaned back against the closed door and sighed, frowning, thinking now about Trieste, and Buster.

 "What does this look like to you?" David asked Vivian when she walked into his office.

"A mess," she said with a grin.

They were staring down at a long roll of parchment, on which were what appeared to be random scratches of the quill.

"What's it supposed to be?"

David shook his head.  "Nothing, maybe.  Do you remember the Journal of Aleutia?"

"That stolen scroll?  Yeah.  What's that got to do with this?"

David motioned to several rolled up parchments.  "Those are copies of the back sides of all the scrolls in the journal.  You remember, that nutjob who wanted it thought there was something in the marks on the scrolls?  Well, that's what they all look like if you put them together."

"It's just noise," Vivian said.

"I'm not so sure," David said.  "Something keeps nagging at me.  I've had this composite done for quite a while now, but something in the back of my mind keeps bringing me back to it."

"I know all about your hunches, David.  If you think there's something there, then there probably is."

"Yeah, but... what?  What do I have to do to turn this gibberish into... whatever it's supposed to be?"

"Well, you made these copies... you made sure they were all right-side up, right?"

"Of course."

"Maybe they're not supposed to be."

"Well, if they're all upside-down, I end up with the same gibberish, just upside-down."

"But maybe there's an up-down pattern you have to find.  Every other scroll, or every third scroll, something like that."

"You do realize there are like a hundred different scrolls?"

"I never said it would be easy..." she said with a grin.

"Thanks so much.  Did you come in here for something specific, or did you just want to give me more work to do?"

Vivian smirked.  "Just wanted to give you this swift that came for you."

David grunted.  Swifts weren't for official orders, which could only mean...

"It's from Commandant Potter."

"Goddamn that motherfucking asshole," David snarled.  "Tell him to do his own fucking work."

"Uh-uh.  You tell him.  They can bust my ass."

David grunted at her.  "Oh, yeah?  I can spank your ass..."

Vivian blushed, but said, "Ooh, that sounds like fun..."

David chuckled, then unfolded the parchment.

"Well, this is... weird..."

"What is it?"

"They want us to investigate some new effect on the battlefield."

"Not a bunch of dead soldiers?"

"Apparently enough of the company survived that they know how the soldiers died, but they don't understand a phenomenon that occurred during the battle.  As such, they want someone with more investigative experience to look into it.

"Well, at least it's a job that actually needs us, for once."

"Us?" Vivian asked.

"I can't deprive you of an opportunity to practice.  If you ever get back to the Rimohrs, just think how rusty you're going to be!"

"Uh-huh."

David pulled her close and kissed her quickly.  She blushed as he let her loose.

"When do we leave?" she asked.

"No reason to wait, might as well go now."

"Ten-Hut!" the soldier snapped as David and Vivian came into the room.

David turned to Vivian and, to twist her tail, he said, "See, you're supposed to come into the room ahead of me and shout that, so he doesn't have to."

Vivian knew he was messing with her, but she blushed anyway.

Turning back to the troops, David said, "As you were."

David moved to the front of the room as the soldiers returned to their seats.

"My name is Vocator David Stroud.  I am the charge officer for Scout Company 1.  Because Capadra Columbo and I were Rimohrs in our civilian lives, we are currently on temporary duty with I-Squad, investigating the battle you just went through.

"Now, let me assure everyone that we are not here to lay blame.  We were told that something weird happened during the battle, and it's our job to figure out what it was.

"To that end, if any of you have anything to say about the battle, let's hear it."

There was a lot of hemming and hawing before someone finally said, "Well, one thing I noticed was that valk wasn't working, no matter which version I tried."

There was some agreement from other soldiers.

"Okay, that's a start.  Were there any other spells that seemed to not be working, or that weren't working like they should?"

 Vivian started making a list on a notepad she had with her.  Once the soldiers stopped mentioning things, she handed the list to David.

Running down the list, David saw a similarity.  "These are all distance spells."

"Sir?" one of the soldiers asked.

David looked up.  "All of the spells you guys have mentioned are intended to work at long range.  You haven't mentioned a single spell intended to be used at closer than ten feet."

"Well, what does that mean?" another soldier asked.

"Hell if I know," David said with a snort.  "All I have is a pattern, not an answer.  I need to see the battlefield."

"The liderra would have to take you, sir.  We're not authorized to show you where it is."

"Right.  Okay.  If you guys think of anything else, whether it be a new spell that didn't work, or something you saw, heard, felt during the battle, or even if you just have a theory... write it down and get it to me.  If this is some new Vrudenan tactic, we need to find a counter for it, and fast."

The same soldier who had spoken initially once again said, "Ten-Hut!"

The room came to attention again.

"Dismissed," David told them, and then he motioned Vivian out of the room.

"Gee, how come you don't yell at them for calling you, 'sir'?"

"Don't worry, I'll yell at you twice next time you do, to make up for it."

"Hmph," she said with a grin.

"This is it, sir.  Nothing particularly special about the location, just a hunk of forest..." the liderra said.

"Must have been something special about it, even if it was just which people were in it," David objected.  He could feel something odd about the place, but he didn't know what it was.

"Well, let's try the simplest thing," David said.  He pulled out his wand.  "Valk vitay!"

A bolt of lightning shot from his wand and impacted an empty spot on the ground some thirty feet away.

"Whatever it was, it's gone," Vivian said.

David grunted.

"Whatever it was?" the liderra asked.

"The soldiers said that their long-distance spells weren't working.  Only spells they used at hand-to-hand range were operating."

"You sure they weren't just covering their asses, sir?"

"From me?  I'm not here to charge anyone, Liderra.  My job is to figure out what happened during the battle."

The liderra grunted.

"Vivian... can you feel it?"

"That sense of foreboding?" she asked.

"Yeah.  I felt it as soon as I walked into this section of the forest.  Any ideas?"

"Only to get out of here.  I'm kind of freaked out."

"Yeah... hang on, let's try a few things."

First, David cast a magic-revelation charm.  This didn't show anything.  The life-revelation charm detected several animals, but nothing else.

Finally, David said, "Just wait here a few minutes."  He walked off, into the area where the battle had obviously taken place.  He moved beyond it, into thicker trees, looking at the ground, the upper tree branches, the bushes, looking for any signs of anything other than werewolves involved.

Finally, after a half hour of searching, David stood up and signaled the other two to come over to him.

"What have you got?" Vivian asked.

"Trouble," David said.  "Liderra, you're familiar with most creatures that live in Callamandia?"

"Yes, sir, I believe so."

"You recognize these prints?"

The liderra looked closely at them.  The impression seemed to be a human foot, only about twice as large, and with claw marks at the front, and one on the heel.

"Nothing that I know of made those," the liderra said, a little pale.

David said, "Something is telling me I know what did this.  Like I've learned about this somewhere, or these clues should tell me... but I can't bring it up.  I think, though, that we've learned all we're going to here."

"Right," Vivian agreed.  "Now what?"

"Now we go back to the base and see if the guys came up with anything while we were gone.  After that, we'll probably go back to HQ to do some research on whatever it is I think I see."

Vivian chuckled at his phrasing.  She said, "It wasn't a Tootsie Roll, I can tell you that!"

David snorted and laughed.  "Thanks, I needed that."

"What's on your mind, Vocator?" the arkigo said as David entered the king's workroom.  David took immediate note that the arkigo was not Eisenpatten.

"Sir," David said, acknowledging him politely.  "I don't know you..."

The king said, "This is Arkigo Ulysses LeGrant, new army chief, David."

"Sir," David said again to his new uber-boss.

"I'll assume you had something for us?" the king asked.

"Yes, sir.  We have a problem."

"Another one?" LeGrant asked.

"This one may make all other problems moot."

"Don't tell me they found the OmniPortal," the king said.

"No sir, it's not quite that bad... but close."

"What did you discover, Vocator?" LeGrant asked.

"The Vrudenans apparently have a new ally."

"Who is it?" the king asked with a frown.

"The demons."

"Oh, shit," LeGrant breathed.

"Are you sure, David?" the king asked.

"Am I absolutely positive?  No.

"I was called in to investigate an odd battle that happened last week.  Though many of our soldiers thankfully survived this one, they couldn't explain, or even understand, what had happened to them.  Their magic was failing them.  That is, all of their long-range spells refused to work.

"When I went to the site of the battle, both Capadra Columbo and I felt a heavy sense of foreboding, as if trouble was coming... or had just left.

"Finally, a physical search turned up footprints made by a being that matches no known description in the collection of animals, dragons, or other sapient races in the kingdom.  It does, however, match several drawings of demons that occur in the Book of the Tivaru, a religious script for Diva Devata Jumala Zot.

"So, as I said, I cannot be completely positive, Your Majesty, but the sense of foreboding, the footprints, and the magic dampening spell all point to demonic presence at the battle.

"They weren't there to help us, sir..."

"Right," the king said morosely.  "Do we know if it's the entire demon race, or just a few?"

"No way for us to know that, sir.  We have no way to communicate with the demons other than through the chapel at Modokaya, and something tells me they're not going to be cooperative, no matter how many are involved."

"Almost certainly not.  What's your gut tell you, David?" the king asked.

"My gut tells me it wishes I lived in Earth right now, Your Majesty."

The king grinned.

"You didn't actually see any demons, though, right?" LeGrant asked.

"No, sir.  Not that I know of, anyway.  I don't fully understand the capabilities of demons... I'm not sure if they can shapeshift.  If they can, there might have been one there, as we did discover several animals... or things that looked like animals."

"Right.  No idea how many demons were at the battle?"

"No, sir, no way to determine that."

"Is there anything at all further you can tell us?" LeGrant asked.

David thought for a second.  "Does, 'we're screwed,' count as useful information?"

LeGrant grunted in dark amusement.  "Unfortunately not."

The king considered this silently for a long time.  David waited; he'd not been dismissed.

Looking to the arkigo, the king said, "Put someone on this.  Research every possibility for either defeating, or at the least neutralizing the effect of, the demons."

"Yes, sir," LeGrant said, wincing.  He knew that getting rid of the demons was liable to be next to impossible.

The king turned to David.  "Thank you for the information, David.  How are you faring?"

The king's specific words told David exactly what he was asking about.  "I've been better, Your Majesty.  How is the offensive going?"

"Not as well as we'd like, but we're at least making some headway in a couple places.  That's better than we've been doing..."

"Yes, sir.  Glad to hear it."

"All thanks to you.  You'll be receiving another citation for that mission."

"Sir, I'd just as soon forego praise for killing defenseless men."

"The citation isn't for completing the mission.  It's for agreeing to take it in the first place, despite the obvious and inevitable personal harm involved."

"Yes, Your Majesty," David said.

"Did you have anything else?" LeGrant asked David.

David thought for a second.  "Oh!  What about OPERATION LYDIA?"

The king grinned.  "You'll be getting a chevron for that little gambit.  Caught not one, but two traitors on that one.  One from Mirelia, and one from here.  Turns out that Jedrak was one of their sources, but he didn't know that."

"No, he just doesn't know how to shut up," David said.

"So I hear," the king said with a grin.  "You know, David... you can't go around abusing all of the people who annoy you..."

"No, sir, you mean I shouldn't, not that I can't," David said with a grin.

The king chuckled.  "Okay, you got me on that one.  You're right.  In any case, Queen Diana did want me to relay to you an invitation to come back and continue her son's education at your convenience."

As the king chuckled, David grinned.  "Has she been asking about me a lot, Your Majesty?"

"She doesn't ask.  After she met you concerning the elemental shield, she asked if I would keep her apprised of your actions.  I didn't see the harm in that, so I do.  Does that bother you?"

"No, sir, just kind of confuses me.  I'm not sure why she cares about some foreign soldier in the middle of another country."

"I get the sense it has something to do with your quest for the shield," the king said.  "Something she found out during her talk with the tivaru.  How goes that quest, anyway?"

"Trying to figure out where the last piece is.  Nothing's turned up yet."

"And the OmniPortal?"

"Making some headway with the portal calculations.  Should start on the OP in about a week."

"Not criticizing here, Vocator, but why is it taking so long?" LeGrant asked politely.

"The calculations are very complex, Arkigo.  Plus, it's not a matter of just running a calculation to tell you where the OP is.  You have to build up a library of known nodes, and then all of that information, when placed into the calculations, can lead you to a possible answer."

"Only a possible answer?" the arkigo fretted.

"Well, there is a very simple calculation which can tell you exactly where the OP is... if you already know."

"If I already know, I don't need it to tell me!" LeGrant grumbled.

David chuckled.  "What I mean, sir, is that it can tell you, if you enter a specific location, whether or not that location contains the OmniPortal.  But the location is less than a quarter-mile radius.  So, to completely cover just a square mile of Callamandia, we'd have to perform the calculation up to thirteen times.  And each run of the calculation can take hours.  So... you have to know where you're looking if you want to use that equation."

"So, if I have this straight, you use one calculation to find portals, another calculation to turn the portals into an OmniPortal location, and a third calculation to verify?"

"Yessir.  You can skip steps to check specific locations.  Like, for instance, I can tell you the OmniPortal does not exist in Senesty or here in Cormatsen.  We ran those checks brute-force, to make sure we weren't missing something that could immediately win us the war."

"Good thinking," the king said.  "Do you have any expectation of finding the Omni?"

"We'll find it eventually, sir.  The only question is, do we have enough time?"

"And we don't know the answer to that."

"No, sir."

A soldier appeared behind David, in the open doorway.

"What is it?" the arkigo asked.

The soldier came in and came to attention, then handed a parchment to the arkigo.  He left when the arkigo dismissed him.

LeGrant read the parchment and cursed quietly.

"What is it?" the king asked.

"The Lycantroops," LeGrant said.

"Sir?" David asked, curious.

"We've discovered a small, elite force.  They conduct special operations.  They are named Lycantroops.  They seem to be augmented werewolves.  They are stronger and faster than normal weres.  They also seem to be nearly impervious to blasts.  It almost seems that the bigger the energy ball you hit them with, the stronger their protection becomes.  We haven't found a way to defeat them.

"We do, however, have a lead on their location, Your Majesty.  We could send a unit against them, if we can figure out a way to actually beat them..."

"How do you find them, in the middle of a forest?" the king demanded.

"The best answer is, you don't, sir," David interjected.

The arkigo looked at David.  "You have a plan?"

"Just an idea, not a full plan.  If you want to attack them, draw them out to someplace you know where they'll be.  Then you can use overwhelming force on them."

"Wouldn't work.  They seem to be able to sense any unit of more than twenty or thirty men."

"So you need small units," David said, frowning.

"Right."

"How many of these troops are there?"

The arkigo said, "Rough estimate of about fifty.  Could truthfully be anywhere from forty to seventy."

David nodded, and thought for a moment.  Finally he asked, "Can you keep track of them for a while?"

"We can try..." LeGrant replied

"What about tailing them with a falconswift?"

"That would put the falconswift in danger," the king objected.

"Sir, we're all in danger at this point..."

"You're right, of course.  Sorry.  I'm used to taking care with our assets."

"Us assets appreciate that, Your Majesty," David said.

The king chuckled.

"In this case, though... if we can figure out a way to take them out..." Both of the other men could see David's mental wheels turning, and so waited for him.  Finally, it was obvious a light bulb went on in his head.

"Can you get them down near Arayel Gorge?"

"We could put out some disinformation about a special operation going on there... it's fairly close to where they are, so they might go looking.  What did you have in mind?"

David described his plan to them.

While LeGrant smiled in agreement, the king frowned.

"This is another one of those missions, David..."

"Yes, sir.  I'm aware of that.  Especially since I will need to stay to maintain things."

"Now you're putting you in danger."

"Does it really matter which one of us does the putting, Your Majesty?  Either way, I'm there.  At least I don't have to scream at an arkigo this time..."

LeGrant chuckled, as did the king.

"Take care, David... none of this is good for you.  That you are now starting to think of these missions yourself, concerns me."

"Sir, in a purely objective sense, that last mission was beautiful.  It was covert, it was easy, and it worked.  We didn't lose a single soldier, and they lost an entire company.  In the logical part of my brain, I applaud the guy who came up with it.

"It's the not-so-logical part of my brain that is appalled."

"Yes, but if you're now convincing yourself these are good things... I'm concerned, David."

"Sir, one way or another, we'll be through this soon.  Either these missions will turn things around, and we won't have to resort to them anymore..."

"Or there will no longer be a Callamandia to defend," the king said quietly.

"Yes.  And that isn't happening on my watch."

"Still.  Be careful, please?"

David smirked.  "Now you sound like my girlfriend.  Or... whatever the heck she is," David said, frowning now, thinking of his problems with Zyla.

The king noted the look, but chose not to inquire, since they weren't alone.

"How long before you would be ready to execute this plan?" LeGrant asked.

"Two days.  I'll need that long to get back up to HQ, get my troop, and get down there and set up."

"Your Majesty?" LeGrant asked, looking to the king.  The king paused, but then gave one nod.  Turning back to David, LeGrant said, "Authorized.  Good luck."

"Yes, sir.  Thank you."  David saluted, then turned and left.

 "What's in this barrel?" Vivian asked, reaching for its plug.

"Don't... touch that," David warned quickly.  "You have no idea how hard it was to get that."

"What is it?" Giendia asked.

"Congealed dragon blood."

"And we have eight barrels of it?" Vivian asked, looking a little green.

"Yes.  The army now owes me several thousand granas.  The bastard wouldn't take a purchase order, and I didn't have time to argue with him."

"I have a question," Vivian said.  "Dragons are sapient, right?  I mean, they're self-aware.  So... how do we get this stuff?  I mean, it's like having a barrel of human blood, or centaur blood."

David smirked.  "Dragon environmentalism," he replied.

"Huh?" Giendia asked.

"Dragons don't bury their dead.  They 'recycle' the carcass.  Now, dragons will not, themselves, consume a dragon's body.  But they will happily sell it to us, or allow other creatures to eat it.  We harvest dragon scales all the time, of course, and a dragon's blood is available for purchase upon a dragon's death.  Dragons don't die all that often, however, so this sort of thing is highly expensive."

"And... what do we need it for?" Giendia inquired hesitantly.

"Bait."

"Werewolves drink dragon blood?" Vivian asked.

"No.  But azetburrow drillers do."

"Azet... not near here?" Giendia gasped.

"Ever wondered why Arayel Gorge is a no-go zone on the maps?  That's why.  Most people make it through fine, so long as they don't stop walking.  Drillers aren't that fast, so even a walking child can outdistance them pretty easily.  But, if you stop...

"The dragon's blood is bait for the drillers.  That's why I don't want you opening it.  I don't want them here, I want them down there, and only after the werewolves get there."  Troop 42 was currently standing on a ridge looking down on Arayel Gorge.

"And... what's going to happen then?"

"You'll see," David said.

"I don't think I wanna see," Giendia offered.

David grunted.  It was liable to be very gruesome.

It was the middle of the night when they heard noises approaching.  Jailla was on outer watch, and he connected with David to show him what was going on.  What David saw pissed him off.

David sat up and shook Vivian awake.  Giendia was on guard duty still.

"C'mon, we've got work to do," David told Vivian.  Her eyes came open at that point, and she sat up.  David admired the view for a moment, as she was naked, but then shook himself and got up to get dressed.

In another minute, they were exiting the tent.  Giendia was surprised to see them.

"Company's coming," David said.  He kept the connection with Jailla, so he knew where the weres would emerge.  He cast a spell, and then just waited.

Soon enough, a troop of forty-eight werewolves emerged.  The thing that had enraged David was the group of seven women, chained together, naked, and obviously abused.  They were human prisoners, apparently the entertainment for the troop's downtime.

The troop wasn't yet aware of their observers, and they were moving through the forest with little concern.  They also moved almost silently.  The human women were levitated and restrained, so that they would not make noise.  Gags were in their mouths.  David knew about the gags; he owned one to use on Olissa.

The weres moved slowly, and then suddenly came to a halt.  David listened through Jailla, so he could understand the conversation.

"Why did you stop?" the leader demanded.

"There is a wall here, Vocator," the front trooper said.

The leader walked up and pressed.  Sure enough, an energy wall blocked their way.

"Fire at it!  Perhaps we can take it down by force.  We cannot stay still here, or the enemy may find us."

"The enemy has already found you," David said loudly.  The entire troop jumped, and turned toward his voice.

The leader blasted an energy ball at David.  It hit the containment charm that David had erected, and bounced off, vaporizing one of the other troopers.

Very nice, you dipshit.  You just killed your own guy," David said.  Turning to his right, he looked over at the women.

"I'll take those, thank you."  David closed his eyes and chanted the right spell.  The women screamed at the feel of something happening to them, but their screams weren't audible, due to the gags.

Suddenly, the women popped out of existence, and then appeared next to David.

"You cannot keep us contained here forever," the leader snarled.  "When you let us out, we will kill you."

David snorted.  "Soon enough, you will be begging me to keep that barrier in place."  Turning to Vivian and Giendia, he said, "Okay, now we can open the barrels."

"But... it's still here, not there." Vivian objected.

"A technicality that we'll remedy soon enough," David said.  He pulled the plug out of four of the barrels, and then used a spell to vaporize the entire lid.  He didn't do that at first because he worried about some kind of vacuum effect splashing the blood on them.  This way, he was sure they were fairly safe.  Vivian and Giendia each opened two barrels of their own.

Next, David dropped one of his time bombs inside each of the barrels.  The explosions were unlikely to kill the Lycantroops, from what Arkigo LeGrant had said, but that wasn't the plan, anyway.

David slowly counted to one hundred, and then he conjured all of the barrels inside the containment field, scattered among the weres.  In a few more seconds, the barrels exploded, and congealed dragon blood splashed everywhere, coating the weres in it.

"Ugh, that shit stinks," Vivian said.  Containment charms did not, unfortunately, contain smells.

Slowly, they realized that the weres were finding it harder to move.

"What's happening?" Giendia asked.

"Congealed dragon blood thickens into a sticky, glue-like substance.  It becomes so thick and viscous that, even if a little bit of it is on your joints, you will find it almost impossible to bend or straighten that limb."

"And dragons have this shit inside of them?" Vivian demanded.

"Congealed dragon blood is a potion, of sorts.  It's not pure dragon blood."

"Oh.  So, we just... leave them there, what, to starve to death?"

David smiled evilly.  "No one's going to starve tonight.  Here, driller, driller, driller...  Here, boy... Dinner time..."

"What?' Giendia asked.

"Oh, no.  You don't mean..." Vivian gasped.

David pointed.  It seemed as if part of the ground was actually moving, at the edge of the containment field.  "They're looking for a way in," David said.  "Think we should give them one?"

"David..." Vivian groaned.

"Tell you what," David said, as he could tell his troopmates were less than enthusiastic.  "Let's ask them, shall we?"

David waved his hand, and the gags and shackles of the former prisoners were gone.

"Ladies?  Do you think our were friends deserve some payback?"

One woman, her lip split, her breasts covered in whip marks and with a black eye, said, "Kill them all."

There were murmurs of agreement from the other six.

"I think the jury has spoken," David said to Vivian.  "Still, ladies, you might not want to watch."

David turned, and released the containment field.  It didn't matter to the weres; none of them could get their legs to move anymore, anyway.

The azetburrow drillers, on the other hand, were immediately on the move.  They swarmed, wriggling and twisting across the ground, until they encountered a werewolf.  Hundreds of drillers climbed each were to find the congealed dragon blood.  There was enough real dragon blood in the potion to incite a feeding frenzy in the little worm-like creatures.

One part of the driller that was not worm-like was its mouth.  The driller's mouth was very odd.  Its central part was a solid cone, with tiny sharp teeth, set in a spiral along the cone.  The part of its mouth that actually took in food was a trench, for lack of a better word, that surrounded the tooth-laden cone.  The cone would spin back and forth, acting as a blender set to puree.  The mouth would then suck in the slurry.

Along the length of the driller's brownish-gray, six-inch-long body were tiny limbs that were some cross between an octopus' arms and a spaghetti noodle.  They could grip virtually anything, and climb it with speed and confidence.

As they were now doing to the werewolves, who were growling and snarling at these disgusting little bastards crawling all over them.

Initially, the drillers were merely after the dragon blood.  But, inevitably, at least one of the drillers on each werewolf got a little too excited, and "bit" into live flesh, causing were blood to flow.

No matter how tasty congealed dragon blood was, fresh blood, and fresh meat, were always better to a driller.  The over-excited burrower would immediately stick his mouth into the newly opened wound and start sucking.  He would, as his name implied, burrow a hole deep into the werewolf's body.  As the first driller settled in to feed, other drillers used the opening, branching out to find new areas of the body to ingest.

All the while, the werewolves could feel what was going on within them.  Soon there were screams and howls of pain filling the gorge.

"Oh, god, David, I think I'm gonna-" Vivian said, and rushed off to a bush to vomit.

"Might be immune to energy strikes," David spat, "But the nips and nibbles of a little bitty critter, you didn't account for, did ya?"

Only one of the prisoners was still watching.  She seemed as fascinated by things as David.  He realized, though, that she was only watching one particular werewolf.

"Which one?" David asked her.

She pointed.

"Took particular delight in you, did he?" David asked sympathetically.

"He liked anal.  I don't.  Once he figured that out, he raped my ass every day for three weeks.  For an hour each time."

"I'm sorry for your pain," David said sincerely.  He then turned back to the werewolves.  "Know that his will last considerably longer than an hour."

"Good," she said.

"What... is happening to them?" one of the other women asked, without looking.

"The driller lives only to reproduce.  Once it has burrowed inside of the werewolf, it will lay eggs, and then it will die.  The baby drillers will finish off the werewolf's body when they hatch, about a week from now."

"How long will the werewolves live?" the woman asked.

"Oh, I'd say another four or five hours, depending on the number of drillers slurping them up."

Vivian barfed again in the bush.

After an hour, the one woman finally turned away.  She wasn't feeling sick, but she'd had her fill.  She had seen that her victimization had been avenged.

David, however, stood and watched.  Though this mission had been his idea, he had been somewhat leery of how it would affect him.  That was, until he had seen the prisoners.  That had wiped any sense of sympathy he'd had for the weres right out of him.  Now, he wanted them to suffer.

"Excuse me, sir?  Could we get some food?" one of the ladies asked.

"Sure.  Viv, are you feeling okay now?"

"I guess," she said from the other side of their encampment.

"Will cooking make you sick again?" David asked.  He was still watching the drillers in the gorge doing their fiendish work.

"As long as I choose carefully what I make, I should be okay.  I'll make something for them."

David nodded, unable to tear his eyes away from the sight below him.  The werewolves were still screaming in pain and wriggling as much as they were able.  It was to no effect; once the drillers were inside, it was impossible to get them out.  They would wrap themselves around some inner body part, and there they stayed, until they died.  The victim would be dead long before the driller, however, from blood loss both internal and external.

The first were to die took two hours.  One of the drillers had apparently started gnawing on something that bled a lot.  David could see the were's blood oozing out of the hole the driller had made in his skin.

"David, are you going to watch this all night?" Vivian asked, keeping her distance so she wouldn't chance seeing what was going on.

"No.  Just until most of them are dead," he said.

"Why?  They're going to die, you know that...  This isn't good for you."

"I'm fine, Vivian," David said.  His voice said otherwise; Vivian felt he was in far too good a mood for the situation.  "And those fuckers are getting what they deserve.  Come into my country, kill my colleagues, capture, beat, and rape our innocent women..."  Raising his voice, he called down to the weres, "What's the matter, you couldn't find any children to barbecue, you fucking animals?"

Of course, none of the weres answered him.  Though most were alive, and all of the living were conscious, they were no longer really coherent.  David's words were gibberish to them as their minds were filled only with pain and agony.

Vivian left David to his vigil, but she and Giendia had a worried discussion about their leader.

"He's in trouble," Giendia said quietly.

"I know.  But what do we do about it?" Vivian asked.

"Tell someone?"

"Like who?  The brass already know there's an 'issue'."

"They should know it's getting worse, though," Giendia said.  "Maybe they would take him off duty."

"I don't think so, Giendia.  I think if that was an option, they'd have done it already.  You know he attacked an officer, right?"

"I'd heard."

"And you saw what he did with Eisenpatten... he was, I think, right on the edge of killing him outright."

"Maybe," Giendia said.  "But the man was being an ass."

"Is that really something to die from?" Vivian replied.

Giendia grunted.  "So there's nothing we can do."

"No.  Not really."

"Shit."

Vivian agreed wholeheartedly.

 David actually watched the sight until every last werewolf lay dead.  The drillers were all snuggled inside of them, feeding and growing their eggs.  In a day or so, they would lay the eggs, and then die.  The baby drillers would hatch, and then consume everything, including their parents.  Drillers were very efficient.

With the addition of the seven victims, traveling was more difficult for Troop 42.  Vivian morphed some blankets into clothing for them.  It wasn't high fashion, but it was better than walking around naked in the forest.

Instead of the planned hour, it took them two and a half hours to make it to their pickup site.  Once there, they waited for daybreak.  The peg coach arrived as scheduled, and they were delivered back to HQ.

"Viv, would you take care of the ladies?  Get them to a healer, first thing.  Then clothes, then shelter.  I imagine wherever they're from doesn't exist anymore, thanks to those fuckers, so..."

"Right.  I'll take care of it, David."

David nodded.  "I'm going down to Cormatsen to report on this to the king and the new army chief, because they asked me to."

"You need me to tell Toni anything?"

"Yeah, tell her I won't be in.  Once I'm done with the king, I'm going home for a few days."

"Yes, sir.  Will do."

David turned.  "Ladies, rest easy.  You're safe here, the Vrudenans haven't come anywhere near this base."

"Thank you.  And thank you for rescuing us.  We probably weren't part of your orders."

"I was writing my own orders, so yes, you were," David assured her.  She blushed.  "In any case, Viv will get you all taken care of.  Good day, ladies."

With that, David headed off to find transportation.

"David," the king said to him hesitantly.  They were walking the halls of the king's Cormatsen residence together.  "You and I haven't discussed much on a personal level, and of course I wouldn't get into it with the military folk around, but there was something you said at our last meeting that got me to wondering."

"Yes, sir?"

"You mentioned a girlfriend, 'or whatever she is'.  I found that the strangest remark.  Care to explain?"

David smirked.  "I'll assume that Christa has reported to you on my lifestyle?"

"I did not ask her to do that... though she does seem to like to talk about you, so yes, I do know that you have many female friends."

David nodded.  "Well, Zyla, my 'whatever she is', isn't clear on whether she wants to put up with that."

"I see.  Zyla.  That's an unusual name, which seems to ring a bell in my mind for some reason.  Should I know her?"

"No reason I can think of that you would, sir.  She's Zyla Garibaldi, the widow of my former training officer."

"Ah, that's why I remember it.  I read the dossiers on both of you during the assassination attempt investigation.  You two have become close?"

"I've been helping her to deal with things since Joe died.  Doing that... yes, I'm as close or closer to her than anyone else in my life."

"But she doesn't feel the same."

"I don't know what she feels, exactly.  I'm not sure she knows what she feels.  All I know is there's not a lot of chance we'll end up together."

"You're not willing to give up the others for her?"

"Promises already made, Your Majesty," David said simply.

The king nodded, understanding.

"Is there anything I can do to help this?"

"No, sir.  I don't think anything can help this, frankly."

"So your home life isn't helping to ease your mind," the king said, frowning.

"Only when I'm actually in her presence," David said.

"Because everything is better then, isn't it?" the king asked.  "I feel the same about Claire, even after forty years."

"I know you both have to be that old, sir, but she, especially, does not look old enough to have been married forty years."

"I'll pass along the compliment," the king said with a grin.  "If you're lucky, I'll even say it was from you!"

David laughed.

After a moment, the king said, "If there is anything I can do to help you with.. anything, whether it be personal or otherwise, please let me know."

"Thank you, Majesty.  Sir... I've been wondering for a while... why, exactly, are you spending so much time and effort on a mid-level company officer who keeps threatening your higher-ranking officers?"

The king chuckled at that last part.

"I mean, I know we've become friends, but we've become friends because you keep calling me here, not the other way around..."

"Well, let's face it, you did save my life once.  And my wife's.  And potentially Christa's, depending on how far those young punks were going to go."

"I was just doing my job, sir... in all three cases."

"Maybe.  But you have a certain... enthusiasm... for your jobs.  Even the ones you don't like.  You also think a lot like me... yet aren't burdened with the requirement of being polite most of the time, so I can speak vicariously through you."

David chuckled again.

"Also, Christa likes you, and, pain in the butt or not, she's a fairly good judge of character."

"I can attest to that.  She's the only one that saw through Lydia."

"Who, exactly, was Lydia?"

"Someone I thought was a girlfriend, who ultimately betrayed me to a dark wizard for money and power."

"Good lord.  You've had that sort of thing going on in your life?"

"I am a demighost entirely because of that dark wizard's family," David said.  He explained the tale to the king as they walked.

"Tell me, David... when was the last time you had a long block of truly peaceful living?"

"Define 'long'," David replied.

"More than a month or two."

"Um... I think I was fourteen or fifteen..."

The king looked at him, and realized he wasn't joking.

"Obviously, what I'm about to say is useless to you at this moment, because it's not something you can do.

"You need to take some time off.  I mean serious time off.  A year, two.

"I don't necessarily mean an extended vacation, but step back away from all the things that push and pull at you, all the things that get under your skin.  Find a job you can do for a couple years that you think is just... fun.  I think that would be helpful to you a great deal."

"I'll consider that, Majesty.  Can I transfer to the Army's Corp of Potion Makers now?"

The king laughed.  "Unfortunately not.  No, I hear you.  We need to get this damned war over with somehow."

"Yes, sir."

"You took us a large step in that direction with last night's mission.  Will you accept the citation for this one?"

"Yes, sir," David said.  The look on his face said something to the king.

"What was different about this mission?"

David knew what he was asking.  He explained about the prisoners.  The king glowered in anger.

"Savages," he spat.

"Yes, sir.  Dead savages, is the important part."

The king grunted.  Shaking the thought loose, he asked, "Will you be staying the night?"

"I think I have to.  It's too late in the day to fly home."

"In that case, you will be our guest at dinner, as usual."

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

"Jonathan."

"Sir, I can't call you by your first name," David gasped in shock.  "About a dozen different rules..."

"Were written by kings, and I can change them whenever I damned well please."

"Can I call you Jonny?" David asked with a grin.

"No," the king said in a tone of mock-severity.  David chuckled.

"Thank you, Y... Jonathan.  That means a lot to me."

"Didn't want my wife being the nice one all the time," the king joked.

"She surprised me when she offered, as well."

"Yes, prancing around in front of my wife without a shirt on.  I should have you disemboweled," the king told him jovially.

"You two talk about everything, don't you?" David said with a grin.  "It was her error, sir, for coming into Christa's room that early in the morning."

"Quite so," the king said agreeably.  "In any case, I'll let you relax.  I think you deserve that.  Go sit in the garden.  It's a wonderful day, and the flowers are in bloom."

"I just might do that."

"I'll see you at dinner."

David watched the king go, and then, deciding it was a good idea, headed for the garden.

 "Uncle David!" Grace cried when she opened the front door and saw him.

"Hey, Gracie!" David replied warmly.  He reached down and picked her up, and she wrapped her arms around him strongly.  "Getting to be a big girl, can answer the door all by yourself now, huh?"

"Uh-huh!"

"And where's Mommy, that she couldn't come to say hello?"

"Mommy was elbow deep in dishwater," Zyla said with a smile as she came out of the kitchen.  "Hey, David," she said.

Zyla stepped close and kissed David.  It was a bit awkward, since he was still holding Grace, but they managed.

When they separated, Grace leaned in and gave David a kiss, too.  Zyla grinned at her.  Suddenly, Zyla's face took on a frown.  "Not another mission, already?"

"Recovering from, actually," David said.  He gave Grace one last hug, then set her down.  "Mainly just trying to take the king's advice, as much as I can, and take a break."

"You talk to the king enough that he gives you advice?" Zyla asked.

"Zyla, I talk to the king enough that we are now on a first-name basis.  And I mean he told me to use his first name!"

Zyla paled.  "That's illegal!"

"That's what I told him," David said with a smile.  "He said he was the king, and he could tell anyone to do whatever he damned well pleased."

Zyla chuckled.  "It's good to be the king."

David snorted.  "So, what were you up to... other than dishes?"

"That was it, so far.  We didn't have a plan for the day yet."

"Well, at least I'm not interrupting anything, then," David said.

"You're never interrupting, David," Zyla said softly.

David grunted.  After a moment, he said, "We could go to the park..."

"Yeah!" Grace interjected enthusiastically.

Zyla grinned.  "The park it is.  Let me just finish the chores."

"I'll help."

David and Zyla were sitting under the same tree as the last time they were here, and Zyla had taken David's hand in hers once more.  He held her close and relaxed, trying to forget all of the crap that his life contained of late.  For the moment, it was working.

Zyla's question was about to break that, however.

"David... how serious were you when you said that we... I mean the country... was in trouble?"

"Pretty serious.  The way it looks right now, one way or another, this war will be over in less than six months.  We simply won't be able to sustain operations past that point, unless our fatality rate goes way down all of a sudden."

"What do you think the weres will do?"

"Nothing good," David replied bluntly.

Zyla shivered, and David pulled her more tightly against him.  She welcomed that.  After a long moment, she said, "David?"

"Hmm?"

"You told Joe that, when things got dangerous, you would move me and Grace to your home.  Do you think maybe it's time for that?"

David looked down at her in shock.

Zyla said simply, "I'm scared."

David just said, "Tonight, or tomorrow?"

"Did you want a separate bed for Grace... Heck, do you want a separate bedroom for Grace?"

Very quietly, Zyla said, "It might be hard for us to spend any intimate time with her here..."

"My bedroom is upstairs," David said just as quietly.  "With no little ears or eyes to hear or see things they shouldn't."

Zyla grinned.  "In that case, this is fine."

David conjured all of the suitcases and boxes that he'd been carrying in his Conjuring Room into a corner, so they were out of the way.

"Come on, I'll take you downstairs so you, and especially Grace, can meet everyone."

"Why 'especially' Grace?" Zyla asked with a friendly challenge.

"Well, you've already met most of them, and a couple of them might be sort of scary for her, so..."

"Scary?" Zyla asked, concerned.

"I do live with a dragon, Angel..."

"Is that safe?"

"I don't think Bispy wants to find out what I would do if he hurt Grace.  He may be a young dragon, but he's not stupid."

"But what if he hurt me?" Zyla asked coyly.

"Oh, that," David said sarcastically.  "That wouldn't be any big deal.  I'd yell, he'd yell, I'd wipe out his entire clan... no problem."

"Uh-huh," she said, and then wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him softly for a long moment.

It was Grace tugging at her mother's skirt that broke their kiss.

"I wanna go!" Grace said.

"Okay, Sweetheart," Zyla said.

"Come on," David said to them with a grin.

Once they were downstairs, they found Olissa in the main room.

"Everyone out back?" David asked.

"Yes, Master.  Good morning, Mistress.  Morning, Grace."

"Grace," David said, "This is my close friend Olissa.  If you need help with anything and Mom's not around, you can ask her, okay?"

"Uh-huh," Grace said.  "How come you're so dark?" Grace asked.

Zyla blushed beet-red.

Olissa grinned.

David said, "Olissa is black, Grace."

"Nuh-uh.  She's brown."

David chuckled.  "Okay, you're right.  But we call her black.  It's just a different skin color.  It means her relatives came from a different part of the world."

"Oh.  What color am I?" she asked.

"We call people who have your color, 'white'," David explained.  "But again, it's just a skin color.  It doesn't mean anything.  Everyone's a little different."

"'Kay."

"Well, that was awkward," Zyla muttered to David.  "Thank you, again, for handling the weird situations she gets me into..."

David chuckled.  "First time she's ever seen a black person?"

"I guess.  Or, at least the first time she's noticed one."

David led the other two out into the backyard.  Though they weren't exactly standing in a line, it was clear that everyone was waiting to greet the new houseguests.

"Well, you know Gwen already," David said.

"Hi," Zyla said.

"Hey, Zyla.  Hi, Grace.  My name is Gwen."

"Hi," Grace said.

"This is my wife, Jess," Gwen said, taking Jess' hand.

"Um..." Grace said.

David caught this one before it came out of her mouth.  "Not all girls marry boys, Grace.  Not all boys marry girls.  In the case of Gwen, she decided to marry Jess.  They did that because they love each other, which is the only reason you need for getting married.  Okay?"

"'Kay," she said, but she was clearly unsure.

"Boy, this is turning into a real social studies lesson," Zyla said with a chuckle.

"Yeah, kind of forgot how limited her experiences are," David replied.  "Who's next?  Oh, okay... Zyla, Grace, this is Denise.  She's Gwen's mom."

"Hello, Grace," Denise said warmly.  When she looked to Zyla, the look was polite, but there wasn't much warmth in it.  "Zyla."  Zyla nodded in confused acknowledgment.

"This is Pat.  She actually lives across the street, but is staying here because of the war."

The ladies said hello to each other, and Pat waved at Grace, who just kind of blinked at her.

 "The people over that way are refugees of the war.  They're neighbors, friends of neighbors, a few people I've met through the years.  They stay in the basement.  If you want to meet them later, you'll have to introduce yourselves.  That would take all day."

Zyla nodded.

Suddenly Grace squealed in surprise.  A pointy little beak had poked her in the butt.

"Eirwyn!  You play nice," David said, scolding the little griffin.

Grace was hiding behind Zyla now, as David knelt down and motioned her to him.  She came, but kept her eyes on Eirwyn.

"He didn't mean to hurt you, Gracie.  He's just saying hi.  Eirwyn likes to play, but sometimes he gets a little too rambunctious.  Come here, Eirwyn.  Slowly."

Grace shivered, but David wrapped his arm around her to comfort her.  Eirwyn stepped up to her and chirped softly.  He then turned his head to the side and rubbed the side of his head and his neck against Grace's chest.

Hesitantly, Grace reached out and petted Eirwyn's back, where the feathers met the fur.  He let out a long, low hoot of enjoyment.

David let that go on for a little while, so Grace would be comfortable around Eirwyn, but there was one more entity for her to meet, and he would be even scarier for her.

"Okay, Eirwyn.  Go play with the Peterson kids."

Eirwyn hooted brightly, and then dashed off.

To Grace, he said, "You can play with Eirwyn later.  He loves playing.  Grace, there's someone living at the house that might be kind of scary to you.  He looks sort of mean, but he won't hurt you, okay?"

"'kay," she said.

"Of course, now I have to wonder where the heck he is..."

"Over there in the grass," Gwen said, motioning.

"Oh, yeah, there he is.  Bispy!" David shouted.  "Come say hello!"

Bispy rose from his spot among a patch of wildflowers and shook himself.

Grace squeaked in surprise.  David held her tightly.

"It's okay.  He won't hurt you.  He's a friend."

Bispy strode over to the group calmly, and stopped several feet from Grace.  First, Bispy looked at Zyla, and snorted.

"What was that for?" David demanded.

"I'm not sure this one is worthy of you," Bispy replied.

"I'll make up my own mind on that, if you don't mind," David replied flatly.

"Of course you will," Bispy said.

"Bispy, this is Grace."

Bispy swung his head to look at Grace.  Grace flinched, but didn't do anything else.

Slowly, Bispy stepped forward.  He sniffed her, and then he lowered his head in front of her.

Her hand actually shaking, Grace reached out and petted the top of Bispy's head.  After a second, she flinched back.

"He's all spiky," she said.

David snorted.  "Grumpy most of the time, too," David confirmed.

"You're hardly one to talk," Bispy told him.

"Quiet, dragon!" David said with a grin.  "You can go back to sunning yourself now, I just wanted to make sure you two met... calmly... for the first time."

Bispy nodded his head at David, then turned and stalked back to his spot on the lawn.

Zyla asked, "Did he actually... speak to you?"

"Yes.  Olissa and I can understand him.  Olissa because he's her familiar.  Me, because... well because he wants me to, I guess."

Zyla nodded, then asked, "Is that everyone?"

"Yeah, pretty much.  I mean, Vivian sometimes comes down to stay here when I'm off-base, because she has nothing to do while I'm gone.  Other than that... yeah, this is everyone."

"I look forward to getting to know all of you," Zyla told the assembled group.

"Same here," Gwen said.  Others murmured in agreement.  Denise did not.

"I'm hungry," Grace told no one in particular.

"I guess it's a good thing I showed up when I did, then," Olissa said, coming out of the house with a tray of snacks and drinks.

"Thanks, Little One," David said to Olissa.  After she set the tray down, David gave her a kiss.

Zyla briefly, but very strongly, frowned.  David did not see that, but Gwen did.

David was standing in his bedroom, staring out the French doors.  It was raining heavily, an early summer storm drenching the area.

The storm closely mimicked David's mood.  Being home, amid normal, peaceful, people, David had reflected on his destruction of the Lycantroops.  He'd become very upset with himself, for being so cavalier about it.  He had, he admitted, enjoyed watching them die.  Though it had lacked the personal intimacy of the event, David felt that what he'd done to the Lycantroops was nearly as bad... if not, in fact, worse... than what he'd done to the were who had defiled Lise's body.  That were had only taken an hour or so to die; the Lycantroops had suffered for over four hours, most of them.  The last had taken a full six hours to give up the ghost.

And during it all, David had stared with grim satisfaction and enjoyment at their suffering.  It troubled him that he'd so quickly gone from becoming nearly catatonic from killing so many at once, to actually enjoying their deaths.  It worried him about his future, and his sanity.

Then, of course, there was the war as a whole, which he knew they were losing, and losing quickly.  Though he had told Zyla six months, David was sure they were closer to three.  Once the weres understood how desperate the situation was, they would put on an all-out offensive to simply break the back of the Callamandian Army.  David frowned at the lightning in the distance.  Though he would sorely want to, he could not fend off the entire Vrudenan Army on his own.  If Callamandia fell, he would lose everything he'd spent the last eight years building.  And go where?  Florida?  Mirelia?  Back to Eureka?  All of those would be highly disruptive to his family.

And then, what exactly was his family?  Gwen had warned him about Zyla's frown.  David understood the implications: it was the first sign of the impending rejection.  Zyla's first reaction to David showing affection to someone else in front of her had been immediate, and highly negative.  There could only be worse to come.

Zyla herself, of course, was trying to put a warm face on all of it.  She was still being affectionate with David, and they had spent the previous night together in his room.  But she was struggling, he could tell.  Not just with his life, but now with having to adjust to a new house, and a new household.  Here, Zyla wasn't a housewife, she was a mistress of the house, and that was an entirely different role, and one she wasn't necessarily cut out for.

Further, David had finally realized there was an animosity between Denise and Zyla.  He'd asked Zyla about it, only to receive confusion in response.  She had no idea what the trouble was.  David had not yet asked Denise about it, simply because he'd had too many other things on his mind to deal with it yet.

Being home also meant dealing with a whole bunch of minor issues that had cropped up.  None of them was particularly important, but they were annoying, and that was something David didn't need at the moment.

Something else he didn't particularly need at the moment was the woman standing behind him, because, although she was attempting to be helpful, she was starting to truly piss him off.

"Master, I can tell that you're upset.  You know you'll feel better if you just talk about it," Olissa said, pressing him.  She had been attempting to get David to open up about what was bothering him for the last five minutes.

"Maybe I don't feel like feeling better right now," David retorted.  "Maybe, for a while, I'd like to be upset.  Has that occurred to you?" he demanded.

Olissa's eyes went wide.  "No, sir, it didn't.  Why would you want to be upset?  That doesn't make any sense to me."

"Why does it have to make sense to you?" David asked sharply, his anger with her growing.

"Master, I'm just trying to understand.  I'm trying to help.  I want you to feel better."

David turned to her, and the look on his face made her suddenly anxious.  He was clearly pissed.

"Did you hear yourself?" David growled.  "I, I, I.  I'm just... I'm trying... I want...  Your job is to do what I want!" he screamed.

Olissa flinched.  She was now truly scared.  She hadn't seen David like this before.

"On your knees, assume the position!" David snarled.

Shaking, Olissa dropped to her knees, spreading them wide.  She put her hands behind her head, interlacing her fingers, and she stared straight ahead.

David walked over to her, unfastening his pants.  "Apparently there's only one way to shut you up," David said angrily.  "Open your mouth!"

Olissa quickly opened her mouth wide.  She saw David's dick in front of her.  It wasn't hard yet, but something told her that wouldn't be an issue for long.

David put his hand firmly on top of her head to hold it in place, shoved his semi-erect dick into her mouth, and ordered, "Suck."

Olissa closed her lips down around David's cock and started to lick him.  She applied suction, but she couldn't move her head with his hand where it was.

She needn't have worried; David provided the movement, thrusting his hips strongly.  As his dick grew, he started to hit the back of her mouth with the head of his dick.  She grunted in discomfort, but he didn't even seem to notice.  He continued to slam his hips forward, driving his cock as far into her mouth as it would go.

Before long, David was driving his dick all the way into her throat, over and over again.  He had never pushed this far in before, and Olissa was fighting her gag reflex.  David seemed not to notice or care about her discomfort.  His thrusts sped up until finally he slammed his hips against her face and held her head in position while he pumped a full load of his jism down her throat.  She struggled to swallow all of it.

Once he was done climaxing, David pulled out of her mouth.  There was no tenderness or care to his moves.  His hand on her head gripped her hair and started to pull.  He didn't actually yank her up by her hair, but she certainly rose quickly to avoid further pain.

As soon as Olissa was on her feet, David shoved her harshly, dumping her onto the bed.  He growled a spell and waved his hand.  Her clothing was shredded off her, rather than being conjured away.  Olissa looked up at her master, and saw a mask of rage and frustration boiling over in his expression.

"You want to help me feel better?  Fine.  Maybe this will help," he said harshly.  He grabbed her ankles and yanked them wide apart.  This pulled her closer to the edge of the bed, but also hurt quite a bit.  She cried out in discomfort and fear.

"Shut up, dammit!" David screamed.

Once she was where he wanted her, he took his dick, which had never softened, and slammed it into her pussy.  Olissa screamed again.

"Goddammit, I said shut up!" David snarled.  He wrapped his hand around her throat and squeezed.  "If I have to shut you up myself, I will!"

Olissa could barely breathe, and only gurgles came out of her throat as David began to rut into her like a wild animal.  The look on his face was crazed, and the pounding he was giving her was very uncomfortable.  When he picked up the pace, she started to squeak and croak with each thrust, making as much noise as she was capable of with his hand cutting off her airway.

With an almost feral growl, David pulled out of her and roughly flipped her over.  Without casting the right spell, he shoved his dick into her ass.

Olissa wailed in pain.

"I GAVE YOU AN ORDER, BITCH!" David screamed at the top of his lungs.  He snapped his fingers to conjure something from the closet.

As Olissa took a deep breath in preparation for another cry of pain, David shoved the gag in her mouth, and viciously tightened it around her head.  The room was suddenly much quieter, as Olissa's cries were absorbed by the magic of the ball gag.  David then pushed on the back of her head, forcing her face down into the mattress and holding it there with one hand.

"So much nicer," David sighed in fearsome pleasure.  He smacked Olissa's ass repeatedly as he fucked her hard, his dick ramming home all the way on each thrust.  David could feel Olissa crying and screaming, but he was too far gone to care.  His thinking mind wasn't even present at this point, and his dark side was in full control of the moment.

Continuing to slap her ass and fuck her hard, David snarled, "Maybe next time I fucking tell you to leave me alone, YOU'LL FUCKING LEAVE ME ALONE!"

David could feel his orgasm closing in on him.  He thrust even faster until he was right on the edge, and then he pulled out of her ass.

"You don't deserve my seed," he sneered nastily, and jerked himself off onto her ass and lower back.  He pumped for a long moment until finally he was fully spent.

Olissa, sensing he was finished, curled up into a fetal position and sobbed uncontrollably.  She didn't dare remove the gag at this point: if David heard her, he might do something even worse.

David was panting like a racehorse after the Kentucky Derby, and he stepped back to look at his handiwork.  Slowly, ever so slowly, over the course of minutes, his dark side submerged, and his thinking brain reclaimed his body.

Only then did he realize what he had just done.

That's when the shaking started.

"What the fuck did I do?" David gasped.  "Olissa, I... what the fuck did I do?"

Olissa was too terrified to answer him, though she was now seriously concerned about his sanity.

"I... how did... I can't... no...  Oh, fuck, I think I'm gonna be sick..."

David ran to the bathroom.  He was so uncoordinated at that point, he couldn't make the toilet.  He stumbled into the shower and vomited violently all over the stall.  For a full minute, his body tensed, trying to drive the evil of what he'd just seen, what he'd just done, from within him.

It didn't work.

Staggering as he rose, David went back into the bedroom.  Olissa had not moved.

"Olissa..." David said, in a harsh whisper she could barely even make out.  The voice shook violently.  "I'm sorry, Honey," David said.  He stumbled out of the bedroom and over into the lift.  He managed to have the presence of thought to put away his dick and zip up, but that was about the limit of his intellect at the time.

David descended to the ground floor and lurched his way through the main room.  He ignored the people there, all of whom looked shocked at the distraught and somewhat unhinged look on his face.  He walked out into the backyard, ignoring the torrential downpour.  He continued to walk until he'd reached the back of the property, where the pond was.

He walked in.

David made his way along the bottom until he was in the deepest part of the pond, and then he sat down.  He did his very best to make his mind a complete blank.  He absolutely did not want to think about what he'd just done.

In the house, Gwen looked over at Jess.

"What the hell was that about?" she asked.

Jess shrugged.

Denise asked, "Where's Zyla?"

Gwen replied, "She's in the kitchen with Grace, teaching her how to make sandwiches."

A longer moment brought another question to Jess' lips.

"Where's Olissa?"

"I haven't seen her," Gwen said, now suddenly worried.

"David was up in his room, wasn't he?" Denise asked, rising from her chair.

"Let's go."

The three headed up to the third floor, in direct violation of a standing house rule.  None of them gave that a lot of consideration.

They found Olissa, still lying on the bed, shaking in fear, pain, and the chill air of the room.

"Oh my god," Gwen gasped.  She ran over to Olissa and feverishly yanked at the straps on the gag, trying to get it off Olissa.  Jess went out to the lift to go down and get Olissa some clothes.  She had seen what remained of her old ones.

When Gwen had finally undone the gag and helped Olissa sit up, Olissa coughed and choked for a bit.

"Where is Master?" she asked immediately.

"He's not going to hurt you anymore, Sweetheart," Denise told her.

"I'm not worried about me.  I'm worried about him.  Where is he?"

"He went out back.  How can you give a damn about him, after... what, exactly, did he do to you?" Denise demanded.

"He punished me for being stupid," Olissa said.  "But it wasn't him, Denise."

"You just said it was him," Gwen objected.

Olissa looked at her, and Olissa's look got very serious.  "It wasn't David, Gwen.  It was... the other David."

Gwen's face paled.  "He... shifted... on you?"

"Something in him snapped.  I was trying to get him to talk about whatever it is that's been bothering him..."

"That wasn't a good idea, Sweetheart," Denise said.  "He's very upset about things right now."

"I know, and he bottles everything up.  He really needs to talk about it, but he won't.  I was trying to get him to, and..."  Olissa shuddered.  "He turned around and looked at me, and... and I knew I wasn't talking to the real David anymore."

"Why did he stop?" Gwen asked.

"Because he was done," Olissa said simply.  "He... fucked me.  Very hard."

"Are you okay?" Denise asked.

"I hurt like hell.  I could use a pain potion for my ass."

"He fucked you in the ass?" Gwen asked, pale.

"That's nothing new for us," Olissa told her.  "But he's usually gentle about it.  There was... nothing gentle about any of that.  Come on, we have to go find him.  He's... not in his right mind right now."

"Jess went to get you clothes," Denise said.

Olissa snorted.  She walked very gingerly over to the closet and opened the door.  Inside were a couple dozen outfits for Olissa.

"I sleep up here a lot, Denise.  I have more clothes here than Master does."

"Even after all this, you can still just... blithely call him Master?" Denise asked in shock.

Olissa turned to look at her.  "He is my master, Denise.  This changes nothing.  He warned me about this when I asked to be his slave.  He put me through very unpleasant things, just to prove I would be able to handle... well, days like today.  And this wasn't his fault.  You know Master would never do this normally.  He's so fucked up right now, because of the war, and Zyla, and all of this shit that he's dealing with..."

"You know," Gwen said, "You could solve some of that, if you just told him whether or not Zyla was the one..."

Olissa glared at her.  "Don't start.  If I did that, it would change the way he deals with... everyone.  Let's say I tell him she is the one, and she decides not to stay.  For the rest of her life, he'd be miserable and maybe even spend that time trying to court her, to save himself.  That would certainly not be healthy for him, and it wouldn't be a lot of fun for the rest of us, either.

"If I tell him she is the one, and she decides to stay, but only because he tells her she's supposed to, then she would probably end up resenting that.  Or she might change her mind and not stay, because she doesn't want to be there for that reason.

"If I tell him she is the one, and he tells her that, then that completely throws all of her thinking into chaos, and there's no telling which way she would turn.

"If I tell him she's not the one, then I might deprive him of the only woman in the world right now that he loves more than all of us put together.

"I'm not going to be responsible for any of that.  The only outcomes where me telling him doesn't make things worse are the cases where she does what she should do, anyway, based on whether or not she is the one.  So there is no point to me telling him."

Gwen nodded, but frowned.

"Come on," Olissa said, finally dressed.  "We've got to find him."

They met Jess coming up the lift.

"I brought..." she said, then realized Olissa was dressed.

"Thanks anyway," Olissa said.  "We have to find Master."

They all ran out back, but they didn't see anything.

"Bispy, can you track anything in this crap?"

"There is nothing to track.  His footprints are rather clear, even to you humans."

Olissa snapped, "Now is not the time, dragon-breath."

Bispy snorted.  They followed the prints right to the water's edge.

"He drowned himself?" Jess asked.

"David doesn't breathe," Gwen said.  "Or, he doesn't need to, anyway.  What the hell would he be doing in the pond?"

"Isolating himself," Denise said.  "Trying to keep away from anyone else he might hurt."

"We've got to get him out of there," Olissa said.

"That might not be too easy, if he puts up a fight," Gwen said.  "He's better at magic than any of us by a huge amount."

"He won't hurt us, Gwen.  He was coming around when he left me.  We have to help him!"

Olissa, Gwen and Denise waded into the pond.  Jess stayed on the shore, in case they needed her to do something out of the water.

"I've got a... head, I think," Gwen said, feeling around.

The three submerged, and then grabbed David by the arms and legs, pulling him toward the shore.  He wasn't fighting them; his body was entirely limp.

Once they dragged him up on shore, they looked at each other in concern.  He looked as if he was unconscious.

"Did he drown himself on purpose?" Denise asked.

"It wouldn't do anything," Gwen said.  "He can't die.  All he'd end up with are lungs full of water."

"So, why isn't he awake?" Denise demanded.

"He is, but he wants to be left alone," David replied sternly, his voice filled with grief, anger, and frustration.

The other four jumped when he spoke.

"Well, that's not happening right now," Denise told him.  "Come on, let's carry his soggy butt into the house."

David still didn't resist.  He could have, as they had said, easily fought off all four of them at once, but he knew he'd caused enough harm for one day.

"Olissa?" Gwen asked.  Olissa was sitting, very carefully, in the main room on the second floor, reading a book.  Her ass was still very raw.

"Yeah?" she replied.

"David wants to see you, in his office."

"He's speaking again?"

"I guess," Gwen said, shrugging.

"Well, that's something, at least."

It had been two days since the incident with Olissa.  In all that time, David had not uttered a word.  He hadn't spoken to Zyla, he hadn't even spoken to Jailla.  He had slept alone, had not eaten, and had spent most of his time in isolation.  On the few occasions he'd been seen, he had walked away when anyone had tried to approach him.

Olissa took the lift down to the first floor and made her way across the main room to David's office.  She knocked on the door.

"It's open," she heard from inside.  The voice made her cringe; it was not the David she knew.  This one sounded lifeless.

"Master?" Olissa said upon entering.  "Gwen said you wanted to see me."

David just nodded, and then held out a set of parchments.  She took them and looked at them.

"Tear it up," David said finally.

"Sir?"

"It's your contract.  Tear it up.  I won't ask you to stay after what I did.  It was inexcusable, and I have no justification.  Tear it up," he said, motioning with his head toward the document.

"Master," Olissa said softly.  "This is only a copy, you know that.  The official document was filed with the Vital Statistics Bureau.  I could rip this into a billion little pieces, it wouldn't mean anything."

She set the parchment on the desk, and moved around it to stand next to him.  "And I wouldn't want it to mean anything.  I don't want to leave you."

"How can you possibly want to stay after what I did?  Have you even recovered yet?"

"Healer Cutner visited yesterday, so yes, I'm mostly fine, Master, just a little sore.  What happened was my fault, Master.  You gave me warnings.  I ignored them.  In truth, I probably deserved worse than what I got.  But in any case, I don't want to leave you because I love you."

David started weeping, and pulled Olissa down into his lap.  He wrapped his arms around her and held her as tightly as Grace had ever held on to him.

"I'm so sorry, Little One," David sobbed.  "So sorry," he said.  He repeated this over and over while she sat in his lap, her arms wrapped lightly around him, her head on his shoulder.

After a very long time, David finally released Olissa.  He ran his hand along her cheek, and then he kissed her softly.  "I love you, too, Sweetheart.  I deeply, truly, desperately wish that I could promise you that what happened will never happen again.  I'm sorry, I can't.  I don't want it to happen again, but..."

"I know," Olissa said.  "You don't have... all the tools you need yet, to keep him in check."

David grunted.  Gently, he nudged Olissa off his lap.  She stood next to him, waiting.

"I'll be heading back to base in a couple hours."

"So soon?" she asked.

"I think it'd be a good idea if... I wasn't here for a while.  You can take a break, and my frustrations can get vented on someone less important to me for a while."

"I don't want you to go on my account, Master."

"Thank you, Little One.  I appreciate that.  But it needs to happen."

"Do you have any orders for me for while you're gone?"

"Just try to help Zyla settle in... assuming she hasn't already packed up and gone back home after this stupidity."

"She is worried about you, Master.  Will you at least say good-bye to her before you leave?"

"Yeah.  I have to say good-bye to Grace, so..."

Olissa smiled softly.  "She loves you a great deal.  Grace, I mean."

David nodded.  "You let it be known that anyone who endangers Grace is putting their life in jeopardy.  And I mean that, Olissa."

"Yes, sir.  I understand.  And Zyla?"

"Her, too, but I figure she can avoid whatever trouble might start up.  Grace is too curious to know when it's not safe."

"I think Bispy's taken to keeping an eye on her."

"Good," David said.  There was no better protector for his goddaughter than a dragon.

David rose from his chair, and gazed into Olissa's eyes.

"I love you so much," David said.  "If I had done something... worse..."

"You didn't, Master," Olissa said quickly.  "You could easily have done so, but you didn't.  Try to remember that."

"Thanks."  He kissed her again, and then they both left the office.

 "Vocator?" Toni asked curiously.  "What is this, some kind of pictogram game?"

David chuckled.  "Not exactly... but close.  I'm working with those parchments over there.  I copied each parchment onto the back of this one."

"But... what are those?" she asked, pointing to some boxes at the bottom of the parchment.

"Well, as you can see, there's no obvious picture here."

"Right..."

"So, what I've done is enchanted the parchment.  Using these boxes, I can make a specific parchment visible or not, and I can flip it upside-down or right-side up.  I can also highlight it in a different color, so I can see exactly which marks are part of that parchment."

"I'm lost.  What good is all that?"

"Well, look here.  I've already managed fitting two pieces together, so I'll show you.  We start with parchment one, right-side up and in the normal black color.  What I did was to go through each of the other parchments, one at a time, turning them on, highlighting them in red, and then flipping them upside-down... trying to see if any of the marks joined up with the marks from parchment one.  You can see here, in parchment twenty-three, that these marks match up with this mark on parchment one."

"Oh, right, I see."

"But in order to do that, parchment twenty-three has to be upside-down.  I just hope that Aleutia didn't introduce ones that are flipped horizontally instead of vertically."

"You'd have to start all over, then."

"Yeah.  Don't want to do that.  I've been working on this for three days already."

"Yikes."

"Did you need something?"

"Just wanted to say good night, actually.  It's already eighteen hours."

David looked at the clock on his desk.  Sure enough, it was already six o'clock.

"Damn.  Okay, well, you have a good night."

"Unless you need me for... something else?" Toni asked with a tilt of her head and a grin.

"Hmm.  Maybe I will put you in for a commendation..." David said with a smile.

The next few hours were very relaxing, but loud.

Denise was in the sun room, relaxing and reading a book, when Zyla found her.

"Can I talk to you?" Zyla asked.

Denise looked up, then put her book aside.  "Sure," she said.  "What's on your mind?"

"Have I offended you somehow?  You don't seem to like me," Zyla said.

Denise frowned.  "You want me to be nice about it, or you want me to just say it?" Denise asked.

Zyla frowned in return.  "If it's that kind of thing, I guess I'd rather you just said it."

"Okay.  I don't want you here."

Zyla flinched and sat back slightly.  "Why?  I've never done anything to you."

"Oh yes you did," Denise said.  "You've managed to turn a fairly stable set of relationships into a complete mess.  And the worst part is, you don't even want him!"

"It's not that simple," Zyla said.

"Oh, yes it is," Denise countered.  "It is exactly that simple.  Either you want to be with him, or you don't.  If you do, tell him so and stop messing with his head.  If you don't, then leave and let him try to work through that pain and get on with his life."

"And if I want to stay, I'm just supposed to accept that you, and Olissa, and who-knows who else will be sleeping with my husband?" Zyla demanded angrily.

"That is who David is.  He doesn't hide that fact.  I'm sure he made it known to you as soon as it was relevant to your relationship with him.  And if you had any sense, you'd know it has to be that way for him."

"Has to be that way?  That's crap and you know it."

"Is it," Denise said, sitting up and swinging her feet around to the floor.  "You've known David for how long?"

"Almost seven years."

"I've known him for about six, so I guess we have about the same read on him.  You would agree, I assume, that ultimately, he is a good man?"

"Yes," Zyla said strongly and with no hesitation.

"Would you also agree that, sometimes, under the wrong circumstances, he can be a very bad man?"

Zyla frowned.  Hesitantly, she said, "Yes..."

"Why is it, you think, that you're so hesitant to agree to that?"

"I don't want to think of him that way."

"Because you know, and I know, that he is every bit as expert at being bad, as he is at being good.  We all really need him to not be bad."

Zyla nodded.  "What has this got to do with our relationship?"

"Zyla... how long do you expect to live?"

"What?  I don't know... until I'm around... a hundred forty, fifty, something like that..."

"So, in around about a hundred years, you are going to have to leave David.  Oh, you could extend that, stick around as a ghost, but I think you'd find that grows tiresome after a while, so... let's just double it.  Let's say, in two hundred years, you and David never see each other again.

"What do you think that's going to do to him?"

"I... I don't know..."

"David loves you more than everyone else here put together, including Olissa, and that, my dear Zyla, is saying something.  You know that he killed a man for hurting her."

"He nearly killed one for threatening me," Zyla added.

"See?  Just for threatening you.  David's entire soul is focused on you right now.  If you choose to stay with him, it's likely to stay that way.  When, not if, you are forced, or you choose, to leave his side, he is going to be devastated.

"Can you imagine what would happen to him if he had to face that alone?  To face the loss of someone he loves so dearly, to have them forever beyond his reach... and with no one there to ease the suffering?"

Zyla considered what David had done to the werewolf who had defiled Lise, and she shuddered.  "What are you saying?" she asked Denise.

"David needs a circle of people he can use to soften the blow of the inevitable repeated losses he is going to suffer.  Most of us are lucky.  In our life, we might go through a couple divorces, lose our parents... if we're really unlucky, we lose a child.  In all, we might suffer a couple dozen losses of people close to us in our lifetime.

"David will suffer thousands of them.  Can you comprehend how much that amount of loss can damage his soul?  How much it could make him start to pull away, forget that he was human once?  There has to be something... someone... to ground him, at all times.  Someone he loves and trusts completely.

"You know, I assume, what happened with Olissa?"

Zyla nodded.

"That happened because she tried to insist David open up to her about his troubles.  David doesn't do that easily.  Not even with Olissa.  But he's done it with you, I know.  Zyla, there always needs to be someone like you in David's life... but who does he have when you're gone?"

"He can find someone else then," Zyla said.

"How easy have you found it, handling the death of your husband?" Denise asked.  "David's going to be in just as bad a shape as you were, if not worse.  If David wasn't here, would you even be considering dating again?"

"No," Zyla admitted.  "Maybe that's the problem.  Maybe I'm just not ready.  But... you're trying to say I have to let him sleep around to keep him happy?"

"No.  To keep us all safe," Denise clarified.  "There is nothing that will make him happy when you leave his life, whether that's tomorrow or a thousand years from now.  But from David's misery will come the kind of chaos in his heart that he's suffering through right now.  And you see what kind of trouble that's causing.  If there isn't someone already there to catch him when he falls... he's not going to stop falling.  He doesn't have the ability to control that side of himself yet.  Who knows if he'll ever manage to get to the point where he can do it all by himself?  He may always need a Zyla in his life.  I can tell you, for right now, and the foreseeable future, if David is ever actually alone in this world, things are going to go to hell, very quickly.  And that's why, yes, if you love him, if you want to keep him from doing things he really shouldn't do... you will allow him to carry on as he has.  He needs to keep building the kinds of relationships that keep him attached to his humanity."

"He could do that with men instead of women," Zyla offered.

Denise snorted.  "Have you looked at David's collection of friends?  How many men do you see?  David doesn't trust men very much.  David only truly opens up to women.  And when he opens up like that, when he lets them in, it's because he has feelings for them.  He tells you things that he doesn't tell anyone else, even Olissa.  That's because he trusts you more than he does the rest of us, he loves you more than the rest of us.

"I know what's eating at you.  It's not just that there are others.  You're worried about what happens when someone comes along who could take your place.  Will David meet someone he loves as much as you?  Probably.  But she's not likely to appear in your lifetime.  Not to mention that David wouldn't allow her to come between you, because he will have made you a promise.  And promises are what got him into this mess.  He doesn't break them.

"So stop fussing over it.  Whether you are his wife or not is entirely up to you.  No one else is going to steal that position from you.  Yes, he has other girls.  He will have even more other girls, as time goes on.  And that needs to happen, Zyla.  He needs to continue finding new friends, new lovers.  

"As proof, let me point out that David isn't speaking to anyone from the Academy these days, due to something that happened in his seventh year.  Had the school been his only resource, I believe David would have already become someone to be truly feared.  Luckily he had friends outside the school, people he could lean on.  This is what always needs to happen for him.  There need to always be people in his life he can turn to.

"Why isn't he talking to people from Woodward?"

"If he hasn't told you, it's not my place to say anything.  I only know from talking to Gwen about it."

Zyla sat quiet for a long moment, then asked, "If you want me gone, why are you trying to encourage me to stay with him?"

"Because I want him to be happy," Denise said.  "If you leave, he's not going to be.  Not for a long time."

At this point, Denise leaned forward and stared hard into Zyla's eyes.

"Let me tell you just one last thing, though.  You only get one shot at this.  If you reject him, if you walk away, I will do everything I can to take your place."

"He's not in love with you," Zyla said, feeling a sudden urge to hurt her emotionally.

Denise's expression didn't change.  "I know that.  I think, given time, that might change, if I became the focus of his personal life."

"Are you in love with him?" Zyla asked.

"Oh, yes.  I started sleeping with David shortly after we met.  Like him, I have had many partners over the years, and they overlapped.

"Until I met David.  I've never told him this... in fact, actually lied to him about it once... but I haven't slept with anyone else since I met David."

"You lied to him?"

"Shortly after I got here, we were talking about it, and he expressed a hope that I hadn't gone without sex for the entire two years when we weren't speaking to each other.  I told him it hadn't been quite that long.

"That was a lie.  Frankly, though our relationship has never been this close, I would have felt like I was cheating on him.  I'm not really sure that my marriage breaking up was entirely my husband's fault.  Yes, he did become distant and disinterested in me... but after David, I honestly stopped caring.  He treats me very well, even for just another girlfriend.

"I will make you this promise.  If you choose to stay with him, I will back away.  I will want to stay in his life, but I will not do anything to harm your relationship with him."

"Would you move out?" Zyla immediately asked.

"If you need that," Denise said, frowning.  "But, like I said, if you walk away now, you aren't getting another chance.  I will not wait a year.  I will not wait six months.  The truth is, if you left today, I would attempt to replace you immediately."

"Don't you think he'd be a little offended by that?"

"No... I think he'd be glad to know that at least someone gives a damn about him.  Do you know any of David's history?"

Zyla frowned.  "Maybe not as much as I should."

"Uh-huh," Denise said.  "If you understood all the shit he's been put through, you'd understand why he deserves whatever happiness he can get, from wherever he can get it.

"In any case, you've been warned.  Frankly, I'll be just as glad if you leave him.  I know I can accept him the way he is, and he makes me very happy."

With that, Denise got up and walked out.  Zyla sat and stared out the window, waiting for the tears to come.

She didn't have long to wait.

 "Morning, Ginger," David said upon coming into the office Monday morning.  He'd gone home for the weekend, but that had been an altogether uncomfortable experience.  Zyla was withdrawn, and wouldn't tell him what the problem was.  The other ladies either knew, or they were just reacting to the tension, because everyone was on edge.

On the whole, he'd rather have stayed in his quarters at the base, or maybe at Toni's quarters on base.  They both knew their relationship had no future, but while they were stuck together during this damnable war, they saw no reason not to comfort each other in the most pleasant way possible.

But now, here he was, back in his office, with his assistant waiting to tell him something.

"Oh, so you do remember my name," Ginger said with a grin.

"Okay, don't start.  I know, we haven't talked much in the last few weeks.  Shit's been piling up.  I promise, I'll tell the king what a great job you're doing."

Ginger paled at that.  "That's... not necessary."

David chuckled.  "Come on, you get to go to royal dinners, sleep in the royal residence... get shot in the head..."

"That's the part I'm avoiding," Ginger said with a grin.

"Party pooper," David told her.  "So," he said, sitting down at his desk and motioning her to sit, as well.  "What have you got for me today?"

Ginger handed over a sheaf of papers.  "All of the equations are in working order.  We've verified ten different new nodes."

"Any of them useful?"

"No.  Most of them, funnily enough, lead to spots under water."

"The planet is like 2/3 covered by it..."

"Imagine that," Ginger said with a grin.  "In any case, we'll need a lot more nodes than these to put into the OmniPortal equation."

"How many?"

"The more, the better.  I figure at least fifty or sixty as a minimum."

"Oh, joy.  You're gonna be busy."

"Thanks a lot, boss!" Ginger said with a grin.

David smiled.  "Hey, I'm still working to find the last piece of that stupid shield thing.  Then I have to figure out what to do with it."

"If it was easy, they wouldn't need an expert like you," Ginger said warmly.

"No, you may not have three weeks off," David said.

"Poo," Ginger said with an overdone pout.  "Three days?"

"I think we can swing that.  What, you have a date back home or something?"

Ginger giggled.  "My mother's birthday is in two days."

"Oh.  Well, tell her I said Happy Birthday, and thank you for raising such a nice daughter."

Ginger blushed crimson at that remark.  David chuckled.

"You're free starting at the end of business today, until next Monday morning.  There's little point in making you come back in on Friday.  Before you go, make sure I have enough information to work on these equations myself."

"It's all right there.  Even the ten portal locations we've already found."

"Now, can we use the four portals that are in my house, as part of the sixty?"

"Yes.  So we only need... forty-six more.  Ugh."

David smiled.  "Think of it as job security."

Ginger said, "I think I'd rather have a different job!"

David laughed and she left the office with a wave.  He flipped through the papers, but then set them aside.  He was still working on the Aleutia parchments.  He was half-way through the pieces, and a picture of something was definitely starting to emerge, but he had no idea yet of what.

Pulling the parchment out, he set back to it.

Zyla was sleeping soundly when she was jolted awake by Grace's scream of terror.  She turned to her child, who was sitting up, staring blankly at the far wall, and still shouting.

"Uncle David!" Grace screamed.

Zyla scooted over and wrapped her arms around her daughter.  "Shh, it's okay, Sweetheart.  You're okay."

"Where's Uncle David?" She demanded.

"He went to work, Sweetheart.  What's the matter?"

"They came and took him away.  The bad men.  He was all tied up.  They threw him in a big hole!  Where is Uncle David?" she demanded again.

"He's not here, Sweetheart, but he's okay."

Unless, Zyla thought, her daughter was having prophetic dreams.  She sincerely hoped not...

"UNCLE DAVID!" Grace shouted at the top of her lungs.  "I WANT UNCLE DAVID!"

Zyla squeezed her daughter more tightly.  "Grace, calm down.  David's not here right now, but he'll be back in a few days.  Everything is okay."

"No!" Grace insisted.  "Wanna see Uncle David!"

Just then, the door to the bedroom swung open.  This was worrying; Zyla knew it had been latched shut, so no one should have dared to come in without knocking.

A feathered head peeked around the edge of the door and hooted.  Zyla sighed.  It was only Eirwyn.  She didn't know how he'd gotten the door open, though.

Her answer arrived once Eirwyn had come all the way into the room, and was followed by Bispy.  Bispy could have used either his hand, or magic, to open the door.

Eirwyn walked over and then jumped up onto the bed.  He padded over to Grace and rubbed his head against her cheek.  Grace wrapped her arms around the griffin, and she began to settle.

"Why don't you try to go back to sleep now, Sweetheart?" Zyla asked quietly.

"Can Earwig stay?" she asked.

Zyla chuckled softly.  "Eirwyn, Grace.  His name is Eirwyn.  And... I guess he can stay..."

Grace slowly lay back down, and Eirwyn turned twice, then settled onto the bed.  He slipped his one wing out to cover Grace.

Bispy, meanwhile, had closed the bedroom door.  He had watched the exchange between mother and daughter, and now he was staring at Zyla.  Once he was certain she was aware of him, he turned twice himself, then settled down onto the floor at the foot of the bed, placing himself between the bed and the doorway, obviously acting as guardian.

Zyla lay back down, considering all that had just happened.

Even his pets protect us...  But is it good for Grace to have dreams like that?  What if they get worse the longer I stay with him?  She is so attached to him already... what will it be like in a year?  Or ten years?

With these troubled thoughts, it took Zyla a long time to fall back asleep.  Her dreams were quite troubled now, as well.

 "Son of a motherfucking bitch," David said.  Toni heard him, and would normally have cringed, but the tone of his voice wasn't anger, but amazement.  She got up and went into his office.

"Sir?" she asked.

David motioned at the parchment he'd been working with.

"You figured it out?"

"Yeah."

"Great!" she enthused.

"Not great!" he retorted, now growing slightly annoyed.

"Why, what is it?  A recipe for pumpkin ale?"

David snorted.  He said, "When I investigated this case, back when I was a Rimohr intern, the guy who stole the scroll was... a nut.  He claimed that the marks on the back of the scrolls could all be put together to reveal the secret to truly controlling the elements.  Like, creating floods and droughts, bringing down thunderstorms wherever you wanted, that kind of thing."

"That's crazy," Toni said.

"But almost true," David said in amazement.  "Amazingly close to true, as legends go."

"It shows you how to control the elements?"

"No," David said.  "It shows me where the pieces of the elemental shield were located."

"Were?"

"Well, all but one of them are now in my coat pocket," David said.  "Which I had to go around digging up clues and playing planetary hopscotch to find.  If I'd finished this sooner, I could have had the shield assembled in a couple weeks!"

"You said you had all but one.  Does it show you where the last one is?"

"Oh, yeah.  And fun it's going to be to get, too.  Have the comm center get DeSantis on the portal for me, would you?  I'm going to have to take some leave for this.  It's going to take a while."

"Where do you have to go?"

"The land of the Ice Giants."

Toni shuddered at the thought.

"Oh, it gets worse," David said.

"How?"

"It says here that the guardian of the location of the final piece, is a firebird."

"Are they nuts?  Firebirds live in volcanoes.  It can't... you mean, you have to go into a volcano?"

"Lucky thing I'm me, I guess," David said.  "Let me know when DeSantis is available, will you?"

"Yes, sir.  And sir?"

"Yeah?"

"Good luck.  And be careful."

"Thanks, Toni," David said with a smile.

"Master!  Welcome home!  You're back fast this time."

"Yeah, well, I won't be here long.  I'm just passing through on my way north, figured I'd stop in and see how things were going."  He kissed Olissa and Denise, who was also in the main room at the time of his arrival.

"How long will you be here?" Denise asked.

"Just a few minutes, really.  I have to head up to Ramius to catch a ride."

"You going to take Cupcake?"

"No.  Ramius is in Vrudenan control at this point.  I will not jeopardize her life that way."

"How long will you be gone, Master?"

"I don't know, Little One.  This is going to be tricky, and dangerous, and I don't know how much of it I'm going to have to do... 'manually'."

Olissa frowned.  "Please be careful?"

"Always," David said.  "Where are the others?"

"Gwen and Jess are at work.  They'll be mad they missed you," Denise said.

"Grace is out back with Eirwyn.  Zyla is upstairs in her room, I believe."

"She's taken to letting Grace wander unsupervised?" David asked, surprised.

"Grace isn't unsupervised," Olissa said.  "Bispy won't let her out of his sight."

"I owe that dragon a whole herd of goats," David muttered to himself.  "Honestly, if I can get out of here without Grace seeing me, it would be better for everyone.  She gets very unhappy when I leave."

Olissa grinned, and Denise giggled.

"I'm going to go talk to Zyla.  How has she been settling in?"

"Could be better, sir," Olissa said.  "She seems very uncomfortable."

David frowned.  "Okay."

David headed back out to the lift, and then went up to the second floor.  He walked down to Zyla's room, and knocked on the door.

"David!" Zyla said, surprised.  She hugged him and gave him a kiss, and then pulled him into the room.  "Is something wrong?  I didn't expect you to come home so soon."

"I'm not staying," David said.  "I had to travel through Bolmont, so I thought I'd stop in and say hi.  Olissa says you're still struggling."

Zyla frowned.  "I just feel out of place."

"It can take some time to settle in," David offered.

"That, and Denise and I had a talk."

"Uh-oh..." David said, concerned at the tone of her voice.

"Yeah, it wasn't a happy conversation," Zyla said.

"Was she rude?"

"No... well, she kind of was, but I told her to be when she asked, so that's my fault."

"I'm confused."

"She asked if I wanted her to be polite, or direct.  I told her to be direct."

"Oh.  Okay.  I'm not sure what her problem is with you..."

"Yeah, well... I don't want to go into it without having more time, but she did explain that."

"Is it something we can fix?"

"Not easily."

David frowned more deeply.  "Shit."  David sighed and held Zyla lightly.  "I wish I had more time to talk with you.  Maybe we could work the Denise thing out.  Look, when I get back... whenever that is... we can sit down and have a good long discussion about all of this.  Okay?"

"When you get back..." Zyla said.

"Yeah."

"I... well... there's a good chance I won't be here when you get back," Zyla said quietly.

"What?" David asked, stunned.  "Why?"

"The last two weeks have been some of the most upsetting of my life, David.  Being here, surrounded by all these people, having to deal with all your women..."

"Zyla, this is a wartime situation.  Once the war is over, there won't be nearly this many people living in my house.  It would just be you and me, Grace, Olissa, and Denise."

"And Penny."

"Is Penny even here right now?"

"No.  At least, not that I've seen.  That's not the point.  She would be in your house, if you were in it regularly."

"Okay, yes, Penny," David conceded.

"And others floating in and out at random," she said.

"Angel, if you wanted me to keep them away from you, I would.  That's not an issue."

"So you'd hide them from me?" Zyla demanded.

David looked at her confused.  "What do you want me to say at this point?  I would tell you whatever you wanted to hear about.  I'm not going to lie to you.  If I spent the afternoon with, say, Vivian, and you asked what I'd been doing, I would tell you that.  If you didn't want me to talk about that, you'd just have to say so, and I would tell you that I was visiting a friend, and leave it at that."

"I just don't think that I'd be able to adjust to that.  And that's not all."

"What else?" he asked, curious.

"There's Grace.  She had a nightmare the other night, about you being dragged off and not coming home anymore.  She's growing more attached to you all the time.  If I stay here too long, and then decide I can't deal with it, it's going to really hurt her.  I can't do that."

David hung his head and breathed deeply for a long moment.  Finally, he looked up and said, "Okay."  He dropped his hands and stepped back from her.

"That's it?" she asked, almost hurt.  "You're not going to try to convince me to stay?"

"I promised you that I wouldn't pressure you about this, that I would abide by your decision.  Do I want you to stay?  Yes, of course I do.  Am I happy you're even thinking of leaving?  I'd rather have my right arm cut off.  But this is your decision to make, not mine.  And honestly, I don't know what more to say to you to make things better.  So, I'll just say the only thing I can think of.

"I love you, Angel."  David took a deep shuddering breath before he said, "I have to go now."

Before Zyla could say anything at all, David left the room.  She stared blankly after him, not at all sure what she felt.

David, on the other hand, was very clear on what he felt.  When he reached the ground floor and was standing at the door, ready to leave, he decided that he needed to express exactly what he felt.

Stepping into the gallery, he looked around at the artwork.  Some of it depicted couples together.  Other parts of it showed families, or romantic situations.  Of course, some of it was abstract or war-related, but those weren't the parts that had his attention at the moment.

David's expression hardened, and he held out his palms to face in either direction.  With a vicious snarl, he shouted, "Conflagro!"

An immense fireball erupted from each of his hands, much more violent than the hono spells.  The entire room was charred, and every object within the room, every painting on the walls, was destroyed.  The house itself shuddered with the force of the fireballs.

David turned and went back to the front door.  He looked back, seeing the charred remains of the gallery through the doorway, and then he turned to go.

"Fuck it," he said, and slammed the door behind himself.