Arvenall Dampiko had risen to his feet shakily, having to quickly reach out and grasp the remnants of a warped and broken terrace railing to support himself, his breath coming painfully in great draughts, as he surveyed the wreckage around him.  The balcony on which he’d stood was barely hanging on to the side of the squat building’s expansive wall and the stone was scorched black and partially melted from the powerful explosion that had rocked the area only moments ago.  One of his lieutenants lay lifeless on the stone surface next to his feet, his clothing seared, his flesh burnt and blackened.  Smoke still rose from off his cooked flesh.  The man had been electrocuted.

 Down below, on the necropolis’ floor, Dampiko saw several other bodies bearing the sign of lightning strikes.

 Lightning.  Lightning had done this.  Lightning guided by the mind and hand of someone who commanded the electrical valences within atomic bonds.  Power like that had been outlawed ages ago.  No one was allowed knowledge of that side of the dark science known as The Discipline.  Such power had turned simple academicians and thoughtful scientists into conquerors and tyrants and it had nearly resulted in the destruction of Teshiwahur’s primary continent.  All those who had possessed such knowledge had been hunted down and imprisoned, or, when possible, killed.

 Except for one.

 He watched, his eyes focusing through the vapor, smog and gloom on a female figure that rose from the ground some three stories below to hover in the air in front of him, her long lightning-staff clutched tightly in her fist.  The woman couldn’t exist.  She shouldn’t exist.

 Nygeia.

 The Warlord doubled over, surrendering to a series of hacking coughs, and then, with an effort, drew himself erect.  When he spoke, his voice was a hoarse rasp.

 “Why in the name of sanity would you choose to intrude into my affairs, witch?”

 “I didn’t.  It was just an odd sequence of events.  One thing led to another.  I had no idea any of this involved you,” she said.

 “So now you know,” he said.  “I have no quarrel with you.  I am fairly certain I have nothing you want.  There’s no need for this.  So you could, if you chose, simply go away.”

 Nygeia regarded Dampiko inscrutably.  After a long moment, she asked, “How many people have you killed today?”

 “What?”

 “How many?”

 “Why would you care?  Of what importance is it to you, Chaos-witch?”

 Nygeia’s eyes were hard and glittered in the dull light suffusing the ruins.  “Our people, our kingdom, has suffered disaster after disaster for cycle after cycle, seemingly without end, since long before you were old enough to carry a sword or fire a weapon.  Tyranny, slavery, greed and murder have long since replaced the carefully constructed rules of civilization we once, as a culture, imposed on the Land.  You have reaped great power from those awful and violent inequities…”

 “As have you, Daughter of the Pahrayah,” he rasped, “as have you!”

 “I have tried to atone for my sins,” she said, “and for the sins of my parentage.  I have rejected the destiny they created for me and have done what I can to end the horrors they perpetrated on the citizens of our world.  It doesn’t make things right, but it is a start…  What have you done?”

 “Survive,” Dampiko said.  “I have fought to survive, woman, and to take control of my destiny on a dying world that would destroy me like an insignificant insect.”

 “Do not debate this man,” a new voice said from the shadows.  “He is a monster and he is proud of that fact.”

 Karliandras Dru’ell, Grand Vizier to Kolag Y'phree, spoke stridently as she limped gingerly into view.  She was dirt-smudged and her resplendent cloak was torn and scorched.  The Grand Vizier’s exposed, pale flesh was marked with multiple cuts and bruises form her ordeal during the battle, but her carriage and her potent and compelling voice carried the strength of her convictions.  She leaned on a twisted bar of metal to aid in moving across the debris-strewn landscape.

 “But don’t kill him, either,” Karliandras said, surprising both Dampiko and Nygeia.  “His death would create a power vacuum into which someone even worse than he could rise to prominence.  And we have a desperate need for stability in this world right now.”

 Nygeia hesitated.  Her intense gaze had locked onto Dampiko’s eyes and he could see her mentally debating the wisdom of the Grand Vizier’s words.

 “People have died, brutally and painfully,” Nygeia said.  “Someone needs be held accountable.”

 “Why split hairs?  It is he, this man, who will be held accountable,” Karliandras said.  “But his fate should be decided by a trial, not by vigilante frontier justice.  You are a Princess, one of the last vestiges of our former glory.  You are better than this.  Killing him like this, here and now, makes us no better than him.  Trust me.  Have some faith that what system of justice we have yet remaining on this dying world can bring his tyranny to an end.”

 Nygeia nodded.  She turned her head and surveyed the field of debris and smoke behind her and came to a decision, “I have no more time for this.  I have to go.  I have comrades down there who might need me.  The Warlord is your problem now.”

 She left, floating away and descending on a breeze of her own creation.

 Karliandras Dru’ell sighed and, when Nygeia was out of range of hearing, said to Arvenall Dampiko, “As ever, you owe me.  As the years lengthen, it sometimes seems that you cannot escape owing me in one way or another.  Your debt should be quite burdensome by now.”

 “Shut up, old woman,” Dampiko snarled.  “If you weren’t my aunt, I would have had you killed in your sleep long ago.  But you are my mother’s sister, and I treasure her memory, so you yet live.  But do not make me regret our blood bond.”

 “My thoughtless, angry nephew,” Karliandras said.  “Would you had been born with more caution than ambition …  and more brains than muscles.”

The noise of the melee echoed sharply down the walled boulevards of the cathedral's courtyard atrium, past the small rectory building and rough the fallen tumble of massive stone columns left by the fall of the octagonal vestibule.  The Pilgrim had retreated here, to the deeper gloom beyond the shadows under the illumination poured down from the gargoyle-clutched crystal eggs, after barely escaping the revolt that wrecked the dryfftnaught.

 He seethed.  It had taken precious little to send it all to hell and he cursed the unanticipated way events had run away from his control.  This was worse than the misadventure he'd experienced when he'd been involved with Bishop Bluhd.  With Bluhd, at least he had opportunity to blame the arrogance of the egocentric madman for the collapse of their scheme, but this time it was his own fault.  He'd underestimated the cunning and determination of the slave-crew of the dryfftnaught.  The thrice-damned Traveler in Red had been right: Lord Cr'Aughtin's crew of kidnappees, prisoners and blackmailed outlaws had been rife for any opportunity to violently rebel against Cr'Aughtin's hierarchal, militaristic consortium.  Enemies had been all around them, conspiring in secret, waiting for any opportunity to seize upon a moment's disorganization.  He cursed himself for a fool.  Such an environment bred its own destruction and he had allowed himself to be a part of it.

 He knew from past experience that he'd always worked best, and worked most successfully, when he'd worked alone, without partners and co-conspirators.

 He should have killed many, many more people than he did.  He should have killed them all.

 He took a moment to get his bearings and to regain his composure.  This wasn't the end of his greater plan.  This was simply one gambit gone bad.  A gamble.  It was a minor setback at best.

 He concentrated, slowing his heartrate, defocusing his attention on the external world surrounding him, and focused on his Inner Eye, on the special extrasensory mesh of abilities that made him more powerful than any one man was meant to be.

 "Taking a nap, are we?  Things just not exciting enough for you?" he heard a familiar, if unwelcome, voice say aloud.  Startled, the Pilgrim opened his eyes...

 Standing amid the aged, dusty rubble was a man in complex, jointed mesh and plate body armor.  He leaned casually against the side of a huge, scaled reptile with coldly malevolent, intelligent eyes.  In one gauntleted fist held grasped the pommel of his shatter-sword.  The weapon glistened, counter-valanced, molecularly disruptive electromagnetic current running across the surface of its razor-sharp dual blades.

 The Knight.  D'Spayr.

 "Back on the deck of the flittership Pandemyon, I told you we'd meet again," D'Spayr said.

 "Go away," The Pilgrim said imperiously.  "I haven't the patience to deal with you today."

 D'Spayr shook his head negatively.  "We have unfinished business."

 Pilgrim drew in a slow, deep breath and calmed his mind to sub-polar emotional resonance.  He would not allow his frustration and rage to take control.  He stood his ground, girding his formidable, genetically-enhanced musculature for a confrontation.

 "If you go now, I'll let you die like a man," he said to the Knight. "Elsewise, I'll take great pains to make you suffer."

 D'Spayr gave a small nod in mocking acknowledgment of the threat.  "I wouldn't want to put you to any effort..."

 Pilgrim let loose a furious bellow as he raised his hands, fingers spread wide, and let fly a volley of purplish-black arcane lightning that literally burned the air it passed through, charring the space between the two men, leaving a snaking, jagged contrail in its wake.

 Arcane lightning was non-kinetic in nature, more similar to a speeding pulse-bolt of ionizing gamma radiation, like those emitted during nuclear fission, than like a controlled electromagnetic strike.

 But the Knight had already begun moving even as Pilgrim had raised those great taloned hands towards him.

 D'Spayr ducked, dropping flat onto his stomach, still maintaining his grip on the shatter-sword, but had drawn one of his long-barreled shatterbolt pistols.

 The beam of the shatterbolt pistol, a stream of coherent, highly-condensed, neutrally-charged particles moving at the speed of light, achieved something resembling physical solidity as it filled the gap between the combatants.  By the time it hit Pilgrim's chest, high on the right side, it had accumulated enough kinetic force to shred a foot thickness of diamond and enough heat to instantaneously melt tungsten steel.

 Pilgrim howled in agony as the impact whipped him around like a child’s plaything, punching a smoking hole though his own formidable body armor.  His blood, iridescently black as the feathers of a raven’s wing, briefly floated on the air and sizzled into nothingness.

 As he fell, D’Spayr charged his position, running as swiftly as an Olympic sprinter, but the Pilgrim’s image had already begun to ripple and bend, undulating on the air liquidly, like water.  He quickly dematerialized, three-dimensionally there and then suddenly very much not there, literally winking out of existence.

 The blades of D’Spayr’s sword plunged into the ground where, only a single second before, the sorcerer’s body had once been.

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