For several seconds, Linduin had trouble simply breathing. Large portions of his brain were asking some very urgent questions, such as "what had happened during dinner", "where had Cheis gotten to", and "was Cheis and/or Pellamin going to kill him for this", but those were largely drowned out by the thundering blast of hormones surging through his prefrontal cortex and amygdala, ruthlessly stomping on his executive function and sending a high-intensity shockwave of powerful emotion through him. Umbria's body entranced him, and he was powerless to stop his hand reaching out towards her in anticipation of feeling her smooth, supple skin. His entire being strained forward, wanting to... to...

Wait a minute. To what, exactly?

It was at this point that Nyoque's plan encountered a very serious setback. The rakshasi had formed here, in Ciel-Upon-The-Sea, where the vast majority of the population were urbanite libertines to whom sexual debauchery was as common as cauliflower. Linduin, however, was not a local -- he was the highly isolated child of a father whose picture belonged in the dictionary next to "emotionally distant" and had been lightly steeped in a rather different societal habitat. It should surprise no one that Galar Kayle had never seen fit to instruct upon or even discuss the specifics of relationships -- he had planned to sit Linduin down for the perennial Talk prior to his departure for prova, but that had never occurred. About the only thing Linduin knew that boys sometimes did with girls was hold hands, although he was sensitive enough to the high-volume screamings of his DNA to be newly aware that they apparently did other things too, which judging from the sensations he was currently experiencing probably involved his genitals in some capacity. But the situation, implying as it did that such things had already occurred, did not actually match his personal preconceptions nor his current mental state; if he and Umbria had done whatever it was his body obviously wanted to do while he was intoxicated, he would almost certainly have some idea, even an unconscious one, about how to go about it or even a general sense of what it might entail. Something here clearly did not add up.

Linduin, as has been mentioned many times, was not stupid. Once he noticed the first discrepancy, his intellectual interest in solving the problem took over, quite handily taking precedence over the sirenic howling of his reproductory urges, and he began to notice other unlikely coincidences. Umbria was rather carefully posed in a fashion calculated to be maximally attractive, rather than in a position similar to that in which a human being might actually sleep; his clothes had been thrown on the floor pants-first, but he always undressed himself shirt-first. His enchanted scholar's stock, which he always treated with great care and importance, had been tossed aside as though it were common clothing. And his stomach and head, which should have been deeply distressed if his reaction to alcohol during the dinner had been any indication, felt mostly numb; he had nothing to compare it to, but on the balance of probability he suspected that he might have been drugged in some way. And that, of course, rather changed the optics of the situation.

Linduin very carefully slipped out of the bed, silently put on his clothes, and stealthily crept out of the room at high speed. He didn't know who was trying to set him up, but it wasn't hard to eliminate suspects: Pellamin might not be fond of him, but he would hardly offer up his own girlfriend as a ploy, and this gambit seemed specifically engineered to get him in trouble with Pellamin, Cheis, or both. Similarly, such indirect methods were hardly Cheis's style; if she wanted Linduin dead, she'd have disintegrated him, not orchestrated a false liaison with her own romantic rival. No, this had obviously been masterminded by a third party; someone with the ability to slip drugs into a dinner, coerce or likewise drug Umbria, and who had a non-trivial interest in the outcome sufficient to justify such efforts. He couldn't assume specifically that he was the intended target; someone might be striking at Cheis through him, or at Pellamin or even Umbria herself. A few suspects suggested themselves to mind, but he dismissed that for now; his current priority was avoiding the trap.

He contemplated his options as he silently traversed the halls of Pellamin's manor. He could go to Pellamin directly and explain what had happened, but that had obvious problems; Pellamin might not believe him, might be involved as a willing or unwilling conspirator, or might be compromised in some way. Similarly, he couldn't go to Cheis without more information (and he didn't even know where she was, or even how much time had passed since the dinner, for that matter). What to do, what to do...

As he turned his various alternatives over and over in his mind, the epiphany which had been silently growing in his mind ever since his misadventure at the library quietly began to blossom. Whoever was behind this, he reasoned, was counting on a specific event to occur: namely, that he, Linduin, would become known by a person or persons, possibly including Pellamin or Cheis, to have purportedly engaged in interactions of an intimate nature with Umbria. The actual critical element of this plan's success or failure -- and indeed, he was beginning to see, of any plan's success or failure -- was the delivery of information. If he could stop, disrupt, or co-opt the flow of that information, he could potentially deflect whatever outcome the perpetrator had attempted to create, and possibly even use that to discover their identity. Cerebrating thus, he decided that his best course of action would be to do two things: gather as much information as he could about the current state of events, and deny others information about himself correspondingly. He stole a cloak from the manor's coatroom, slipped silently out a window, and lost himself in the city; he had the advantage of initiative, a pocketful of gold coins, and the beginnings of a plan. The first step of such a plan was to get his hands on another copy of Stosser's Keening as soon as possible, because another thing Galar Kayle had never quite gotten around to discussing with his son was the subject of addiction.

***

Atop the spire which had until recently been the Black Oak, a series of events played out which appeared rather differently to each participant. To Galar Kayle, it appeared thus:

The robed and masked figure turned slowly and portentously towards the glowing figure of Meloria, then back towards him. Galar staggered, then fell to his knees. "Have you come for me? Is it my time?"

The figure regarded him silently for a few moments. Then a sepulchral voice, clearly infused with great power, echoed from it. "Alus. Ve hobrax remorsam."

Galar's body shook as a sob forced its way out of him. He didn't speak the spirit language, but he understood its meaning perfectly. "Yes. You're right. I should be remorseful." He looked up at Meloria, glowing with white light. "I never appreciated her. I was so full of myself... my own petty desires and selfish goals..." He began to weep, finally understanding exactly what he had lost. The figure stood there silently for some time, then turned and mounted on its skeletal steed.

"Wait... wait." Galar struggled to his feet. "Am I to follow you? What must I do? How can I atone?"

The robed figure looked upon him for a moment, then raised a gloved hand to point in the direction the projectile had launched over the mountains. "Vis hobex. Nar arus decimenva."

Galar turned, looking towards the horizon, then looked back. "I understand. I must complete my mission to expunge my sin." He gathered his strength, swept the tears from his eyes, and nodded. "I will go."

The skeletal figure gestured, and a path downwards appeared as the black flesh of the demon castle fell away to either side, creating a smooth channel for descent back to the ground. The skeletal horse, bearing its rider onwards stoically, began to descend, and Meloria followed. Galar, understandably daunted about joining the retinue of Death itself, hesitated for a moment, but his will did not falter long. Hefting his spear, he fell in beside his wife's spectre. His calling, it seemed, had one more journey.

To Velinaer, the situation was a little bit different. Embarrassed, he looked back and forth between his jujoram and Cool Staff Guy. "Shit. Uh... sorry about that." He cringed internally as Cool Staff Guy fell to his knees and started crying. Oh jeez. He didn't have the faintest clue how to react to that. Awkwardly, he decided that he should just leave, but as soon as he managed to get back up on his mount the guy got up and ran over to him, jabbering something in whatever language they spoke here. Crap. He didn't have the slightest idea how to respond to whatever this weepy ninja dude was saying. "Look, uh..." He pointed in the direction that the igg had escaped. "I gotta go take care of that." To his surprise, the guy followed his gaze, then turned back and nodded, saying something that sounded like "Hibbity jobob. Moss bitta lee-fan sorpresata. Veenia." Okay, whatever that meant.

Velinaer thought carefully about how to get down, then executed a two-point null structure; a smooth channel was carved out of the flgathu in front of them to allow his poor horse to descend. Lost in thought, he failed to pay attention to his surroundings for some time, and it wasn't until he was almost out of the valley that he realized that Cool Staff Guy was following him, and that the giant army was following Cool Staff Guy. Oh well. Surely a giant army and some kinda magic ninja bro could be useful, right?

***

A hundred miles to the east, a black shape came splashing down in the Sea of Orlow.

The igg had been a bit concerned during the final phase of the descent, being as it was not actually familiar with the concept of large bodies of water nor of their relative hardness when compared to solid ground, and it had spent the last moments before impact wondering if its shell would hold up. Upon discovering that it was suspended in a hydrogen-oxygen fluid, it rapidly recalled its tactics at the Saurgar River (though it didn't know them by that name) and began growing specialized structures for hydrolysis and biomass acquisition. It quickly discovered that long trailing tentacles were excellent at capturing large volumes of fish; within a few hours, it had quadrupled its size once again and was working on a means of directed locomotion. It had quite liked being very large, despite the logistical problems such a state had occasionally given it, and was keen to refine its design. Growing a set of propellerlike fins, it stopped for a moment to ascertain the direction of the signal -- much stronger out here -- and set a leisurely pace towards it. No sense rushing, after all; there were a very large number of fish in the sea.