Perun looked from the old woman to Veleček and back again. The wet, electrical sting of danger prickled his skin for the first time since he'd arrived and immediately his mind snapped to attention, abandoning all thoughts of flight.  

"What exactly will happen to me?" he asked. It was a question, but sounded like a demand. "If I don't. . . remember."

The old woman's eyelids drooped and she seemed to drift off to sleep. Perun looked to Veleček, who took another drag of his cigarette and waited, his eyes focused on nothing but the air. 

In the silence, Perun could hear not only the familiar popping and crackling sounds coming from the fire, but also the distant hum of people enjoying themselves. Conversation, the collective murmur of human voices came up through the floor, accompanied by the faint, cascading notes of music and the occasional dull tinkling that he recognised as kitchen clatter. A nightclub. That's what Veleček had said. They were at his nightclub. And that meant people. 

Witnesses.

As he scanned the room, Perun now noticed that the paintings adorning the walls were of the same scenes as they had been before, just in a totally different, modern style. He continued to compare and contrast what he'd seen before -- what he thought he'd seen before -- and what was in front of him now. 

His gaze alighted on a desk, far more graceful and delicate than his own, standing on the far side of the room.  Behind it was a shiny wood-and-metallic surface of a world-receiver radio with a glass roundel for viewing film broadcasts.

A cold knife-blade of envy jabbed into the Hammerfist, as his mouth flattened out into a grim line and his eyes narrowed in displeasure.   

Possession of a receiver like that would allow Veleček to not only listen to what was going on anywhere in the world, but also allow him to view national and pirated news footage from around the world through the crystal roundel. The picture quality was not nearly as sharp as in the cinemas where the National Axis sanctioned weekly news reels were cast up onto movie screens by dark, hulking projectors before the main feature, but that was far outweighed by the convenience and unfiltered information access. 

World-receivers weren't illegal, not yet, but they were very rare and chokingly expensive. They also had the unfortunate tendency to shatter into a pile of splinters during surprise National Axis raids.

No, Veleček couldn't be behind the times. He -- and here Perun struggled with the notion -- was possibly more ahead of them than Perun himself.

Dangerously more ahead. 

An image of the gravedigger's sleek motorcycle appeared unbidden. New, expensive, top-of-the-line. The exact opposite of the corridor and this very room when he'd entered. 

Veleček had merely snapped his fingers and it had all vanished. All of the vestiges of the last century had melted away in an instant to reveal a room so modern it bordered on the futuristic. Exactly like he had tried to melt away Perun's ideas of what was coming, of how the political landscape of Europe was forming. 

Everything he'd seen before of this place had been a direct reflection of what he'd expected to see. He'd expected an old man in an old, outdated environment and that's exactly what he had seen. 

Perun stared at the world-receiver, at its shiny adjusting knobs and the decorative mesh over the speakers in the shape of lilies. 

Had he been utterly wrong? About everything? Was Veleček right and he'd possibly put his own head in a noose?

The baby by the hearth moved slightly, shifting in its blankets and smacking its lips before quieting again. Perun turned his head to gaze at it for a few moments, before turning back to focus on the old woman still drifting in her own mind.  

Could he really decide? Was there a simple way out of all of this?

What happens next entirely depends on you.  

The old woman's thin, wavering voice startled Perun out of his thoughts. 

"This is what awaits the Wiedergänger, Perun Tmavomrak, known as The Hammerfist, if he refuses the chance afforded to him this night."

The old woman's arms moved from her sides and settled onto the armrests of her chair like Perun had seen movie versions of mediums and clairvoyants do.  His fists involuntarily clenched the edge of a couch pillow.

"Experiments. Torture. The National Axis will quickly discover they can't kill him by normal methods, and will decide to experiment until they do. He will become the subject of an intense scientific inquiry he will not be able to escape from, although he will try. The correct combination will not be found before the coming war ends. By then, Perun Tmavomrak will be a cripple in constant pain, abandoned and left to fend for himself. That pain will drive him to search out the combination himself. And he will find it, after a very, very long time."

The old woman opened her eyes and gazed at Perun, who sat with his mouth open, shunting between belief and incredulity. 

For a long time, no one spoke. Only the murmurings of the party below and the occasional crackle from the fireplace broke the silence. 

"What's this combination? I've been told-- " he finally asked, his throat strangely dry.

"You aren't immortal, Perun no one is," the old woman answered, her voice level and calm. She brought her hands back up and steepled them in front of her chin. "Despite what you've been told, you can die, you can be killed. But only in very particular ways and in very particular circumstances. That's what it was referencing. Your particular combination. " 

"I still don't --"

It was Veleček who answered. "That priest the Russian tsarina was so fond of, Rasputin, you remember. He was one like you. A Wiedergänger who successfully survived all attempts on his life. That is, until a few aristocrats with connections to the occult figured out a likely four-point combination. They poisoned, shot, stabbed and then drowned him. All in rapid succession. Alone, none of those methods would have been effective. Not even several of them together. But all four. . . " 

That hard? It was that hard to kill him? Someone would have to repeatedly put his lights out? And he'd been afraid of a bullet in the back all this time? 

"Others however," the old woman broke in, a stern note of caution riding in her voice as if she knew the wheels that were turning in his head. "are brought down by something far less dramatic. The scratch of a cat.  An overdose of a particular herb that would not have any harmful affects on normal people. It could even be something abstract. Love, for example." 

Perun and the woman locked eyes for a moment.

"Yes, even that," she said, almost in a whisper.

Love. Did she know? 

He had seen the look in her eyes when she'd opened them after speaking his future. His possible future. There had been no pity or sympathy in them. 

Rationally, he didn't expect there to be. She was an impartial judge, a conduit of something more fundamental, unswayed by emotion or the limited, egotistical pleading of those whose fates had long been sealed. She would watch as the cord of his life was cut just as impersonally as she had everyone else's. He knew that -- but it still hurt. Deeply. 

He searched her face, the pale, thin skin, the dark, crimson lips, for a trace of feeling, for an indication of regret, of loss -- and couldn't find it. His fate, this possible fate, left her cold. He felt tears sting the back of his eyes.

The baby uttered a small cry, and woman's gaze shifted slowly from Perun's stoney face to the hearth stones. 

"So, that's what will happen if I refuse. And if I go along with it? Do what you want?" Perun turned to Veleček. "What then?"

"You come back where you belong and we all survive intact. Neither of us lose our wealth or status in what comes after the whole mess. And there will be an After. No war lasts forever. We have to plan for that, too. Like we always have." 

"Always have. So, you're a Wiedergänger like me? I see. Know your combination?" Perun smirked, struggling to regain a bit of the bravado he felt dwindling like sand running down the sides of an hour glass. 

The intended slight missed its target. 

Veleček shook his head. "No. But it's my fault you are. I didn't put you in the river like the mother of whoever that is," he gestured towards the baby by the fire with a nod. "The creature who did though, did it to get even with me. That makes me responsible."  

"You should thank him, Perun," the old woman said. "He sacrificed a great deal to get you out of the grip of the Vodař. But that has nothing to do with the choice you have yet to make. What you must remember is the conscious decision you made as an adult, not what happened when you were a mere child."

"The Vodař." Perun said, undeterred. "That was that. . .demon in the water, wasn't it? How did I get in there? Why didn't I just drown if I was put in the river?"  The question was addressed to Veleček, who took another drag from a newly lit cigarette before answering. 

"He drowned you within sight of Vyšehrad. That makes you one of the Vyšehrad Drowned."

A vague recognition of the term ghosted through Perun's mind, but too vague to attach anything to it.

"The Vyšehrad Drowned. Aren't they some kind fairy tale spirits?"

"Yes, just like talking river reptiles and lost princesses and vampiric messengers." A strange spark of mirth played on Veleček's face. "That doesn't mean you might not run into one one day, does it? Maybe quite by accident and when you least expect it. Who knows?"

Perun snorted, but with far less conviction than usual. "Well?"

Veleček sighed and looked to the old woman. She shrugged slightly. "Tell him if you want. It makes no difference." 

"The Vyšehrad Drowned are the unwanted children of the city. The ones whose parents can't, or don't want, to care for them. The Velko Vodař takes them. That's why they have to be drowned on purpose by a member of their family within sight of the castle. Prague has to know who to take and who fell in by accident."

"Prague?" 

"The Vodař is a fragment of the power and essence of the city even long before it was what it is today. Not a pleasant fragment, granted, but it serves a distinct purpose. Rather like the Royal Collector of Souls does." 

Veleček waited a few moments for Perun to digest the information. But before he could open his mouth to ask more questions, Veleček continued. "You were never unwanted, Perun. Know that. And it wasn't a member of your family. It was. . . You never should have been in there. It was my fault and I'm sorry."

Neither Veleček or the old woman spoke as they watched Perun turn and pull his socks from the fire screen. Once they were on his feet, he reached for his boots and strapped them on, the laces cracking like whips against the leather. 

Perun stomped a few times lightly against the floor to settle his feet in the boots, then took a deep breath and said, "If I remember, then I'll have to come back to where you say I belong, right? What if I remember and don't want to come back?"

"We'll talk about that when the time comes," Veleček said, looking uncertain for the first time. "You need to eat something first."

"No, we talk about it now." 

"Perun, you owe Veleček your life," the old woman said, sternly. "If you refuse to come back, then you'll be required to pay back what he sacrificed for you. If you don't, then back in the river you go. Right back to the arms of the Velko Vodař. And there's nothing he'll be able to do to stop you staying there this time." 

The memory of the demon, its laugh and the feeling that it was coming to claim him reared up in Perun's mind. 

"What's the amount?" he whispered. "I want to be certain what all my options are."

"Thirteen souls. That's what the Vodař asked for you. Thirteen innocent and uninvolved souls. Just like that one." Veleček nodded towards the baby on the hearth. 

The room began to swirl inside Perun's head. He reached out and grasped the armrest of the sofa.  

The old woman stood up, smoothing her dress. 

"Go downstairs and eat something," she said. "The night is far from over and there's a lot of business yet to attend to." 

---

Uh-oh. Bit of a pickle our Perun finds himself in, isn't it?  Now that the stakes have been laid out, he at least knows what he's in for. . .once he starts to remember.

Tune in next Friday for the first frightening steps into the past Perun has been trying to avoid all this time.