“Why you filthy little mongrel!” Lord White drove a heavy fist into the man’s exposed cheek, sending him down to one knee.

They both sat in heavy silence, waiting for White’s anger to subside. When his breathing finally evened out, the Lord Councilor stood high with his hands behind his back, and faced away from the man he just struck.

“Ragoth…” White said his name like it left a disgusting taste upon his tongue, “ I require my son, Mezir, for his lesson. Be a gentleman and fetch him for me, would you?”

He obliged without a word.

Ragoth stood as straight as he could, his leg still not entirely healed from his accident days before, and placed the white teardrop mask back onto his head.

“You called, father?” Mezir would be respectful. Despite any animosity he may hold. Polite… until he wasn’t.

“Good… Mezir, do you have any questions about today’s happenings?” White turned to face Mezir’s mask, towering above him even from a few feet away.

“Actually, I do have just a couple...”

Mezir slowly turned the chair across from White’s immaculate desk toward himself, grabbed a second by the wall to their right, and sat with his legs stretched across both. Waited.

Mezir is nuanced… but forward with his intent. Sit, his actions said, get comfortable because we are going to talk about this.

Lord White stood for a moment seemingly looking at Mezir.

Likely looking at the name displayed by his mask trying to convince himself its true.

White sat behind his desk without a word.

Inside Mezir’s mask an array of lights began flickering on and off. A silent alarm that meant someone was preparing to cast. That someone, would be Lord White, of course.

He was always a bit threatened by Mezir, wasn’t he? Even before the rebellion. Huh…

“Firstly, my Lord father, thank you for asking.” Mezir paused, held his hand out, and cast to pull a pitcher of water and a cup from across the room to himself. Easy for Mezir but quite the struggle for Ragoth, still dripping sweat beneath the mask. He poured a glass and set it on the desk between himself and Lord White. “And congratulations on getting rid of that pompous imbecile… Danfin, was it? He seemed like one who would cause some troubles for us down the line. I presume you’ve already thought of an excuse to tell the nobles as to why their ambassador has disappeared?”

White remained wordless, motionless in his chair behind the desk, but the water inside the cup gave his anger away. It rippled as if someone were dumping an endless pile of pebbles into the center of the cup. Lord White’s hands must have been trembling under the table.

Good. Mezir would like that. Ragoth enjoyed it too, silently.

White shook his head from side to side and chuckled, “No. No, I have not Mezzie. I am assuming you have a solution to that problem though, yes?” The water in the glass stopped rippling as White leaned with his elbows on the desk, hands clasped just below his mask.

Mezir had always enjoyed this little game they played, their battle of temperance and wit. Ragoth had only recently begun seeing the appeal.

“Yes, actually I do, father! Fortunately enough, nearly all of the nobles are terrified of you.” Mezir stopped now and picked the glass up off of the table. A small cylinder popped out of the front of his teardrop mask, just long enough to reach the bottom of the glass. He drank slowly. Ragoth was having a hard time not laughing his ass off inside of the mask; White despised when others chalked his achievements up to any amount of fortune. He had worked hard and others were to acknowledge it. Ha! “ Ah,” Mezir set the glass down and poured more water from the pitcher, “Those nobles who aren’t as scared of you, as they ought be, are generally well receptive to me. So… let me handle this one. All you need to do is tell anyone who asks about poor old Danfin that he left this office with me. I will handle the rest.” Mezir only filled the cup halfway, watching for more ripples.

There were none. The lights inside Mezir’s helmet had stopped blinking.

Shit. Ragoth started getting nervous. Breathe. Be Mezir.

Lord White sat back and stretched. His body relaxed and he situated the single lens in the middle of his daunting framework mask directly on Mezir. But is he looking at me? No! I am Mezir!

Ragoth had been having too much fun. He must have slipped up somewhere. His leg started to ache.

“I think that sounds absolutely wonderful, my boy. I am ever so glad to see you stepping up to take on some true responsibility after such a long time spent daudiling. You had me worried I would never get the real Mezir back for a while there but it seems the war didn’t bury you completely. At least not that smart mouth of yours!” White’s head sprang back as he roared in laughter that didn’t end until it turned into a wet coughing fit.

Oh, Creator be blessed…. Right, keep it up! What would Mezir- no, what would I say?

Mezir chuckled in the sudden quiet of the office, “Delightful! Now, since that matter is settled, I would love to hear the truth about Trallengard. I figured it must be severely dire to have you so on edge, so sloppy, father. Though the cleanup was immaculate, not even a stench left behind! Ha!”

Lord White shook his head up and down and moved a file across the desk. “This is the last report I was sent. Go ahead, open it up. I’ll wait.”

Mezir wouldn’t open it up… Mezir’s mask highlighted the document in a red light, flashed twice, and displayed snippets of information before him.

“Last agent…. Joining armies…. New king…. General M.”

General M? M…

“Mezir?” Lord White had turned his head sideways and was watching patiently with his hands folded.

“Uh, yes, sorry father,” Mezir would never apologize to White you idiot, “ I see that things are actually quite dire… I mean the armies alone would be no match for you, surely… but this General M character, what do we know?”

White sat up a little, his head perked just a bit higher than before, and he spoke gently, kindly; like he would to Mezir when he was young. “ Absolutely nobody, Mezir. Certainly no one my son should be concerned with. He’s not worth your time.” Ragoth hated how his own chest swelled with pride for a moment. Mezir would too.

Ah, so I should look into that on my own. “Right. Thank you for today, father. I learned more than I could ever have hoped.” Mezir stood, positioning the chairs exactly how they had been before he entered, returned the pitcher of water and cup to their respectful places, and stood before White’s desk with his hand tapping the chin of his mask.

“Another question, Mezir?”

“Yes… yes, just one, father. Why exactly are you sending Lili-Bon to her death?” Mezir loved to catch his father off guard.

Ragoth nearly pissed himself with laughter as the whole desk shook for a moment.

“Out. Now. Mezir.”

***

Heria was in the hall not fifteen paces away from Lord White’s office, situated between two ornate doors with a third directly across from her. She had been there the entire morning waiting for Mezir’s “lesson” to end. White had told Heria to stand somewhere that made it unclear where Mezir would be so she had picked her spot and not moved for a few hours. She had spent nearly the entire time replaying what had happened with the bandaged man in her head.

Heria almost had that stinking street rat where she needed her when he sprang out of nowhere and took the air out of her lungs with an unbelievable kick. “Silent One”, as the other guards had been calling him, waved his hand before her and the next thing Heria knew she held an injured Mezir draped over her shoulder, hobbling down Noble’s Road. She’d been up the following four days trying to recollect her memory, which accomplished nothing aside from making her dead tired. Though, in that regard, she was not alone.

All of White’s guard, from novice cadets to elite Serpints, had been scouring Blancana nonstop looking for the bandaged man and his companions. There were no shift changes, even for Mezir and Heria. Most guards had resorted to eating small meals on the go, afraid to be caught idle in such dangerous times. Anyone not stationed to guard one important place or another was out, knocking on doors, rummaging through alleys, and bringing citizens who seemed suspicious in for questioning. Thus far, it had all amounted to nothing. A fact that was more infuriating and maddening to White, and subsequently his guard, than anything she had ever seen in her time at the estate. The contagious, sleepless rage had not bothered Heria, honestly; it just acted as a way to keep her out of her own mind.

An escape she longed for in the near empty halls of White’s palace.

The infinite white of the marble walls used to help Heria numb herself, though over time it seemed only to enlarge the images of her overactive imagination, forcing her to accept them. The wild girl's snarling face was as tall as the palace ceiling before her for just a brief moment, projected on the flawless marble. The image stayed just long enough to quicken Heria’s heart. It beat against her eardrums like an incessant toddler vying for their mother’s attention.

Get it together, Heria! She closed her eyes, brows squeezed tight. Giant hands clenched.

Closing her eyes proved to be the wrong call. As soon as Heria’s eyelids sealed shut she was face to face with ‘Silent One’ or at least an apparition of him. Completely unable to peel back her self-imposed prison Heria had no choice but to stare back at the visage before her. Just like on the old training grounds, all the man did was wave his hand, but this time as it passed before Heria from left to right everything changed. The darkness of her closed eyes became the vibrant yellow, blue, and extravagant purple of a lavish loft; Seires Manor. Her family’s manor.

It had been at least twenty years since Heria had seen it…. But there it was in perfect detail. Exactly as it was in her youth. They hadn’t been the most fortunate family, economically, but they did well enough to just barely stay in the lands of the nobles. Her father was no Lord, her mother no Lady, and their family had never once held claim to a Legend’s bloodline; but they were happy. At least, she had been happy in her short time there. As an only child at the manor she had near run of the place, though she spent nearly all of her time with books crammed in her face. It had been a near paradise for the young lady she had once been; for a young, gentle, beautiful Helena Seires.

She saw herself sitting there, back against the wall, reading some manifesto by a long dead general from Trallengard.

Legends, I was gorgeous.

The images shifted before her again and there they were. Her parents. Smiling at young Helena and waving with pride as they had on the day she rode away in a shuttle bound for White’s famed Stroma labs. The lovely quaint Seires daughter had become the youngest scientist in all of Blancana and led a relatively amazing life up until just before the Fracturing. She wished she’d stayed there with her family that night. Fortune and fame be damned.

No. No! Stop- I can’t do this, not right now! Helena is dead, dammit, they’re all dead!

Heria’s head snapped back hard enough to hit the marble wall behind her. She saw stars and barely held shaky knees up as she caught her breath. Covered in a vicious sweat, Heria thanked the Legend’s that she was still alone in the hall, though she had no idea how long it had been. Before the white splotches of light before her eyes vanished she heard a quick shuffling nearby and focused to see through the haze.

She caught sight of a still beaming Lili-Bon leaving White’s office in a full sprint, a tubby nobleman stepped aside just before she could bowl him over and glared hard until he saw the Serpint’s mark on her shield. Heria was as perplexed as he appeared at staring at the young woman who had miraculously snagged one of those from Lord White. She felt a bittersweet joy for the girl, ‘Simple Lili’ to the assholes in the barracks. It was always a time for celebration when someone entered the Crucible of Blancana, for joy, and pride in the participants…. But Lili-Bon…

Heria knew the young girl was not simple, far from it. Lili was brilliant, methodical, beautiful, and beyond too kind for the world they lived in. Heria wanted to grab the young girl and shake sense into her. There alone in the hall, no one would see. No one would hear Heria spew heresy against Lord White or the Crucible. No one...except Lili-Bon…. The single most honest person Heria had ever met. She was certain the girl was actually incapable of telling a lie. Though she’d proven to know how to keep secrets between friends… No.

Heria bit her tongue and smiled at Lili-bon as she stormed by, looking ahead to some bright, far off future where she could shove her success back into the faces of those who called her simple her whole life. She wouldn’t dare squash that kind of hope.

Goodbye, dear Lili-Bon.

Heria resumed her post.