The clientele of the Edgewise hadn't known Calponia long, but when the Captain bellowed 'Duck', hands seized her from both sides and shoved her behind the relative protection of a table. She couldn't help the grin, with Cesario on one side and Ravelock on her other. A blade thudded in the space she'd occupied a moment before, vibrating over her head in a vivid reminder of their current danger.

Calponia peered up through the gap in the tables, eyes wide as nearly two dozen cloaked figures spilled through the gaping rectangle hole in the wall, fog curling off black cloth. Their faces remained hidden, the hoods pulled so far forward only the tips of their chins could be seen. The knives they carried, however, were quite visible, flashing through fog and dust. Another blade winged through the air with deadly accuracy, nearly hitting Cesario when Eugene rolled in front of them to smack it away.

"Get behind the bar!" The vampire scuttled forward, handkerchief flapping over his mouth as he gained momentum, shoving into the first group through the door.

"Come on, we need better cover," said Cesario, her tone grim. Calponia caught the tremor in her voice, glancing up to find the woman even paler, her eyes glassy as she looked at the figures pouring into the Edgewise.

"They're the ones that chased you," she said, hesitating before hooking her arm around Cesario's slim shoulders. She believed the Edgewise wouldn't let her curse hurt anyone, though the massive hole in the wall meant it might be distracted. Weighing it against the danger of staying in throwing range, she took the risk, keeping them low as they half walked, half crawled to the bar. Ravelock followed behind them, pulling an elaborate pistol from folds of his long coat. She thought it an old fashioned flintlock until honest to goodness beams of blinding blue light emitted from the barrel.

"Is that a freaking laser gun?" Calponia stumbled, barely catching herself and Cesario's weight on the corner of a table to her ribs. She winced, rubbing the spot with her free hand. "What kind of pirate are you?"

"Uh, well armed," said Ravelock firing the gun directly into one of the cloaked figure's hoods.

"No killing!" Calponia yelped, earning the look from the Captain that comment deserved.

"I think the rules are on hiatus for the moment, dove," said Ravelock, using his sleeve to catch a blade in a maneuver Calponia wouldn't be able to pull off even if she rolled a natural twenty. "Tuck yourselves behind the bar, ladies, and improvise some defenses."

Calponia had an idea, but she knew Mack wouldn't like it. Cesario suddenly pulled her down to the floor, narrowly avoiding another whizzing blade as the woman dragged her behind the bar.

"Thanks," Calponia breathed. The transvestite waved her off, closing her eyes for a moment. The ambrosia might have sealed her wounds and set her on the healing path, but Calponia suspected the internal damage was still excruciating for her friend.

She reached up, feeling along the foul smelling counter top until she found the ruined towel. "Remember how we handled that bounty hunter who came after the Munch?"

Cesario cracked her eyes open at that. "By the Bard woman, you cannot seriously think about lighting something on fire right now?"

"Do you have a better idea?"

"Calponia, you can't." Cesario leaned forward, her face white as cottage cheese, but her grip bit into Calponia's bicep. "The Edgewise is helping Mack heal Prospero. Now it must repair the breach to its walls. Do we really want to add fire to the mix?"

Calponia paused mid way through ripping the soiled towel, her expression torn. She'd seen the tavern shape rooms and repair its own furniture, but much to her chagrin she didn't know a wink about its limits. So far, she was doing a bang up job as Mack's apprentice.

"I shall have to add that to my list of questions," she muttered. Cesario blinked at her, shifting her battered body to make herself more comfortable. The movement shifted something else, something barely there and gossamer that winked in and out of Calponia's vision.

"Don't move," she said, placing a hand on the woman's shoulder as she pinched nothing in the air. It certainly felt like nothing between her fingers. She frowned, pulling her fingers back., wondering what was wrong with her, when she met resistance. "What the hell?'

"What? What is it?" Cesario attempted to twist her torso to see, wincing in pain.

"I'm not sure," she murmured, lifting her fingers to eye level. The resistance increased, infinitesimal but it was there, a light as spider silk against her skin. She peered down, trying to see something both present and not, mostly invisible to the eye. Calponia tilted her head. There it was again, a delicate thread. Now that she knew it was there she followed it down, swallowing hard when she saw where it connected to Cesario's healing knife wounds.

She couldn't explain it other than a gut feeling, but she knew what it meant.

"I think I know how they tracked you here," said Calponia, turning to follow the thread to its opposite end. The barely there thread glinted and disappeared across the room, through the tussling vampire and pirate, out into the swirling portal of fog.

What was on the other end? Who was on the other end? 

Her concentration slipped as Eugene tossed another hooded figure across the room. She watched it sail past, crashing against the far wall with a series of hard snaps that made her flinch. That guy was ding dong done–

She blinked at the figure rolled to its feet and charged back into the fray, knives in hand. The hands. Her stomach rolled. The figure's hands were clearly broken, fingers at odd angles, grip askew but it launched itself back at the vampire without a hint of pain.

"What the hell," she whispered again, taking in more of the brawl. Eugene continued to pummel and fling combatants about, but the fight was wearing on him, healing cuts dotted his arms and face, the handkerchief long since lost. A hank of dark hair hung loose and clumped with blood against the side of his face. Ravelock didn't fare much better, his knife catching trick useless with shredded sleeves. He sported his own share of nicks and bruises, but he kept steadily firing his gun. His hits were solid, deadly, each time but not a single body littered the tavern floor.

"What are they?

"Zealots," whispered Cesario, her voice faint. "Foot soldiers of the Inquisitors. They gave over their bodies entirely to the order. Mindless meat..."

"What the frack does that even mean?" Calponia snapped, biting back a gasp as one of the figures did an impossible leap into the air, clambering onto the vampire's back. It raised a blade high and plunged it into Eugene's chest. The vampire grunted, falling to his knees, his pale face grey.

Calponia was moving before conscious thought talked some sense into her. With a blue streak of swears, she jumped onto the attacking zealot, clinging like a monkey as she used her momentum to spin them both off and away from the injured vampire. She screamed profanity in the thing's ear, calling it words she'd heard in the dankest city bars as she beat on its covered head with anything handy in arms reach. It finally staggered when she slammed a thick bottle of gypsy made fae liquor across its skull with a resounding crack. That was the action that deemed her a true inconvenience for it as a hand reached around and yanked her off. Unfortunately, Calponia had a firm grip on its cowl, ripping the hood back. She stared up a plain old fashion volto mask, like weathered ivory, and creepy as all get out. Yelping, she slapped her hand up and across the smooth surface, her fingers catching on the edge to knock it free.

Calponia looked up into the face of the thing that held her and whimpered. The zealot's fingers tightened their grip on her shoulders.

"Kraken's balls, they're already dead," said Ravelock. 

She couldn't answer, not even with a smart remark, as she stared up into those filmy opaque eyes. There were not many things that truly bothered her, that niggled into her hind brain to keep her up at night with nightmare after horrific nightmare. Even the horrors she'd experienced on Sanguinheim were easy for her to compartmentalize, but there was something about dead things...no, about zombies. Zombies squicked her right out of her head.

So she chalked it up to that long standing deep seated irrational fear for what happened next. Calponia lost her ever loving mind. An unholy screech erupted from her mouth as she raised the still intact bottle of fae liquor and proceeded to club the creature's face in. She smashed the bottle into its face over and over, long after the skull caved under the assault and chunks of bone and gray matter went flying. She stopped when the creature crumpled to her feet, twitching.

Calponia stood over the body, gasping for air, suddenly aware everyone, even the undead zealots had stopped to stare at her.

A small smile played across Eugene's mouth.

"You laugh and I bludgeon you next," Calponia snarled, hefting the bottle high.

"Least we know they can be brought down. Good job, dove," Ravelock winked at her, before hefting up a chair and bringing it down on one of his foes to resume the brawl.

Calponia offered a salute when the forgotten string pulled taut, now tangled around her fingers. Painfully tight and cutting into her skin, the string yanked her forward, tripping her off her feet as she slid rapidly across the floor, straight for the swirling fog. It happened too fast for the semi conscious Cesario and her injured companions to react.

"Calponia!" She heard Eugene call for her, gritting her teeth at the excessive pain radiating up her arm. The invisible thread was going to reel her right out of the Edgewise, to whatever waited for her in the fog.

Mack could feel the Edgewise's strain through that extra set of interior senses that made them so attuned to one another.

Grin and bear it, man, grin and bear it. He couldn't afford to break his concentration, not when the whole bloody building rocked on its foundations moments ago, opening the wounds he'd worked so hard to seal on the old man.

He would lose Prospero if he broke away now but he could feel the urgency in the tavern's shivering rafters. It was wounded, badly, and the energy he drew on to keep the old man alive kept it from mending the breach. It was a situation too contrived for his liking.

His nostrils flared as he channeled energy into his old friend, knitting together tissue far more damaged than he initially thought. How could he have missed the extent of this damage? Unless, it was hidden from him somehow.

It was a taunt, the same sort of taunt as a pile of dead wolven in the middle of the blood forest. The same sort of taunting he'd run into, time and time again, over the past couple decades, slowly increasing in frequency. He'd never connected it until now. Something else that wasn't like him. Even now, Mack felt bereft, as if massive pieces of the puzzle were missing, forever out of his reach.

Who was his enemy?

What was their end game? Opening doors. Leaving symbolic piles of bodies. Breaking barriers between realms that were never meant to intermix, these were the sort of activities that attracted the attention of those left best in slumber. Poke at the old ones enough times and they will turn you inside out and erase you from existence, if you were lucky. Why risk that sort of attention?

Mack had too many questions, not enough answers, and the level of manipulation at play here made him leery. It'd been a long time since any body had managed to pull one over on him.

At least, he believed that to be the case.

Prospero released a breath, slipping into easy slumber at last. Mack broke the hold, leaning back. His bones ached from the effort of channeling so much energy. He wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep for three days but the Edgewise needed him, his new apprentice needed him, hell even those sluggards who called themselves patrons needed him. Mack stumbled to his feet, fighting the dual sensation of sinking through the floor and floating toward the ceiling. Quite disconcerting, to be honest. He turned a corner and frowned.

There were no corners in this hallway. It was a relatively straight shot, from back wall to stairs.

"Huh," said Mack. There was only one door down this offshoot that shouldn't exist, and it looked like all the other doors in the hall. It was slightly ajar. Puzzled enough to banish some of disorientation, he braced himself along the wall, moving toward it.

Mack prided himself on knowing the majority of the Edgewise's secret nooks and crannies. To miss a whole hallway was...unsettling.

It was with no small amount of trepidation that Mack reached out and pressed the door open further to reveal a disaster.

A true ruin, every piece of furniture bearing damage, many pieces splintered, the mattress shredded. Black burn marks scorched the walls and floor like scars.

"By the realms," Mack breathed, stepping further into that broken space. He could almost believe the Edgewise conjured this space  in the moment to manifest its outward damage if not for the thick layer of dust coating every surface. Rather, the Edgewise had concealed this room, for years, for some unknown purpose.

There was something, something important he couldn't quite access in his thoughts. His fingers clenched against his thighs as he turned in a circle, staring at the burnt walls, waiting for them to cough up an answer.

A crinkle beneath his boot drew his gaze to the floor. A corner of paper stuck out from under his foot. Not paper, a photo, aged and weathered. Yet when he removed his foot, the shock of recognition nearly sent him reeling. He knelt down in the dust, plucking the photo up for a closer look, staring down at his own face beside another man, a man with dark curling hair and imperious green eyes. These were not details obvious in the faded picture. These were details he knew, locked away so skillfully in his memory he didn't realize they were missing til now. Just like the man's name. Or his relationship to Mack.

Mack stared down at the faded photo of his former apprentice. The taunting made much more sense now.