“...And then Vilmos put us in your storage area,” Alexandra concluded.

“I see,” Rasmussen said as he stroked his long brown beard. He was an unusually large and tall middle-aged man with long messy hair. He wore simple black robes, as was customary of physicians in the empire.

“I know this is a minor detail, but do you know what condition that servant girl was in? I don’t think I can go to the palace at this hour without arousing suspicion, but I would like to help her as soon as possible,” Rasmussen inquired. Alexandra shook her head.

“I’m afraid I don’t know. I wasn’t close enough when it happened to make out any minute details.” She said. Rasmussen sighed.

“I guess I will just have to go to the palace early tomorrow. Hopefully, I will be able to twist somebody’s arm and get the opportunity to check on, provided she survives the night. Still, I don’t know how they’re going to treat me when I get there, considering what happened,”

“What do you mean by that? You’re the royal physician and the crown prince is gravely ill!” Ekkehardt piped in.

“Former royal physician,” Rasmussen corrected, “I was relieved of my duty a few hours ago; right after I completed my diagnosis of Prince Alexander. Agrippina had me replaced with some foreign nobleman; an Alemanian from the Confederation. He was some big bald guy with a massive scar running down his face. I think his name was ‘von Dunkelwald1-Faulenberg2’... or maybe it was ‘von Faulenberg-Dunkelwald’. I can’t remember; I was a little too busy getting dragged out of the palace to notice.”

“Wait, you know what’s wrong with Alexander? Do you know how to get him back to normal?” Alexandra asked. Rasmussen sighed.

“I do. Let’s all get into my operating room. I have some books there that will help me explain what’s going on… as well as some chairs… you’re going to want to sit down for this…” Rasmussen explained before leading them down the hall and into his operating room. As Alexandra moved through Rasmussen’s house she noticed that it was a bit of a mess with various medical tools, bottles of medicinal herbs, and various other small items related to the man’s work scattered all over the place. Despite the fact this was her first time visiting her doctor in his private residence, Alexandra could help, but feel a sense of familiarity with her surroundings as Rasmussen’s house had the same degree of disorder that his facility in the palace did.

Rasmussen led the party through a door that opened up to a large room. The walls of the room were lined with chests, drawers, and bookshelves while a long wooden table sat in the center. Upon the table lay a tall, muscular man with blonde hair. He was naked, save for two white clothes that were draped over his face and his genitals. His body was covered in cuts and bruises. Without thinking Ekkehardt rushed towards the body.

“Siegfried… I’m sorry…” He uttered. He felt his stomach churn as his throat swelled. Tears began to form in his eyes as his vision blurred and his arm began to shake. He didn’t want to believe what he heard earlier, but now that the truth was right in front of him there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t bottle it away or ignore it. Alexandra rushed to his side.

“Eike…” She began, but Ekkehardt cut her off.

“If you’re going to ask me to show a single iota of mercy to Agrippina then you're out of luck. She’s a monster. We’ve known this for years and done nothing.” Ekkehardt stated, his gaze now shifting away from the body on the table. His words were filled with a sort of malice that she had never heard from him before.”I swear to Siegfried: that abomination will die by my hand!” He proclaimed.

“Mr. Lowe, uh there is something I think you need to know…” Rasmussen chimed in, only to be cut off by an unexpected noise.

“Daaaz roooight! Muck ‘er pay Eggert!” A voice shouted from somewhere behind Ekkehardt and Alexandra. It spoke in a strange and slow way; slurring it’s words and ending it’s statement with a hic-up. Everyone turned to the source of the noise, who was emerging from a closet that Alexandra had failed to take note of while entering the room. Through a half-open door, Alexandra saw a large man wearing nothing, but a cloth diaper around his waist and many white bandages all over his body. The bandages covered the entirety of the top of his head as well as his right eye. A bloodshot eye with a blue iris was visible on the left side of his face. One of his arms was in a splint and hanging from a sling. As he stumbled towards Ekkehardt and Alexandra, the princess noticed that he reeked of alcohol. He then proceeded to do something to Ekkehardt that was halfway between hugging him and falling on top of him.

“I wuz sooo worried ‘bout you…” He said to Ekkehardt.

“Siegfried?” Ekkehardt blurted out as he tried to keep the two of them from losing balance.

“Goddammit, you buffoon! How the hell are you even ambulatory?” Rasmussen snapped.

“Rasmussen, what’s going on? Is that Siegfried?” Alexandra asked. Rasmussen sighed.

“Yes, that is Siegfried Lowe. He was brought to my house earlier today. Apparently, Agrippina had the royal torturer do a number on him; put him on death’s doorstep.They wanted me to nurse him back to health; make just barely strong enough to survive what they had planned for him next. I wasn’t really in a mood to cooperate with them and there was the matter of Mr. Lowe’s newfound importance to natural philosophy. Endangering his life at this point would be a crime against medicine, so I swapped him out with some dead drunk an associate of mine dropped by house earlier today. Really fortunate that this big, strong, blonde-haired man died when he did; otherwise I would have had to let them throw Mr. Lowe back into whatever oubliette they were keeping him in. I couldn’t let that happen! No, I will need him to be as healthy as possible if I want to conduct all the experiments I have planned for him. If only I didn’t have to wait until my death to pub...” Rasmussen explained only to have Ekkehardt grab him by the collar of his robes.

“What the hell are you planning to do to my brother?” He demanded. Rasmussen was not amused by this action.

“Calm down you, oaf! I had no intention of cutting him open or anything barbaric like that. I just wanted to monitor his health over the course of a few months. The man had a piece of metal lodged in his brain. If I am able to properly record and analyze any abnormalities in his health and athletic performance over the coming months then I might be able to determine the exact function of the human brain! We already know that the stomach and intestines process food, the spleen makes black bile, the heart is responsible for thought, the lungs handle both breathing as well as the production of phlegm, and the liver produces blood, but we understand literally nothing about the human brain! A breakthrough in our understanding of the brain could mean so much for the study of natural philosophy3.” Rasmussen shot out. There was a brief pause. Rasmussen then leaned in towards Ekkehardt and began to speak in a more calm manner, “There is also the issue of your brother’s relationship with his highness. I know that he values your brother greatly and, as I am sure you are aware, I am very deeply within his highness’s debit. He was one of the only people who stood up for me after...” Rasmussen then leaned in closer and began to speak just barely above a whisper, “...well… after the quality of my service came into question.” He said, finishing his sentence while nodding his head towards Alexandra ever so slightly. Ekkehardt released him.

“Um, Dr. Rasummssen, why is Siegfried acting like this?” Alexandra asked, as Siegfried got up close to her and began mumbling incoherently at her.

“Why, that’s because he’s drunk, your highness. I needed to give him something to numb his pain and the only thing that seemed to work was absinthe. I had to use a whole bottle of it. I honestly don't know how he’s even awake right now.” Rasumessen explained.

“Uh dunno evin nuh how yerr…” Siegfried mumbled as he began to sway back and forth, like a tree in a storm. His eye slowly closed as his voice became inaudible. He would have fallen to the floor if it weren’t for Ekkehardt employing his strength and quick-wits to grab him by his one good arm before he fell over.

“Mr. Lowe, could you please… deposit your brother in that closet over there. I was able to place a cot in there for him.” Rasmussen requested. He then uttered the syllable ‘veh’. That was all it took for Vilmus to spring into action and assist Ekkehardt with his task.The two of them, together with Schirmer, carried Siegfried to the cot in the closet and set him down gently upon it. Schirmer had black hair that was graying somewhat prematurely and there was a vertical scar about the length of a finger that ran along the lower left side of his face. He was a large and tall man with broad shoulders, so his assistance was greatly beneficial to Ekkehardt.

“We need to puh-puh… he needs to be on his side; in case he vomits…” Vilmos explained. The two other men complied. As the three of them returned from the closet, they found Rasmussen and the other men setting up some wooden chairs for them to sit on.

“Vilmos, could you get everyone some wine?” Rasmussen asked.

“Yes, sir. Would you like for me to get the Strivalian bottle?” Vilmos responded, subtly gesturing to Alexandra as he did so.

“Yes. That would be good,” Rasmussen said as he took a seat. The rest of the members of this meeting followed suit. There was a brief silence.

“So, I guess I should cut to the chase and explain the nature of Prince Alexander’s condition,” Rasmussen began.

“I think we would all like that.” Ekkehardt responded. The rest of the group nodded their heads in agreement. Ramsussen began to explain the situation as Vilmos returned to the room and started handing out cups of red wine to the group.

“Alright then, an official story has been circulating within (and exclusively within) the palace. According to this story, Prince Alexander was the victim of a curse inflicted upon him by a dark sorceress, a devil-worshipping witch by the name of Alexandra von Adler…” Rasumssen said, only to be cut off by the sound of a small amount of wine being rapidly and forcefully expelled from someone’s lips. This sound was accompanied by Ekkehardt blurting out the word ‘what?’.

“I’m not a witch!” Alexandra blurted out. She was going to follow it with ‘who would dare make such an accusation against me’, but the answer to that question came to her before she could even say it. Rasmussen sighed as he looked at the droplets of wine that got on his robes.

“Well, I assume that anyone who has the composure to make a dark compact with otherworldly entities probably has the composure to not shoot liquid out of their mouths at the first accusation of impropriety, but what do I know?” Rasmussen grumbled as he wiped the wine droplets off his robe with a rag.

“...sorry about that…” Alexandra replied in a voice that was half-way between speaking and mumbling.

“Anyways…” Rasmussen resumed, “When I was brought to his highness, I found him naked, chained to a bed, and shouting a number of obscenities in various languages. The body of literature on this condition isn’t exactly large, but I was able to recognize what exactly was wrong with his highness. I had only seen anything like it once before; a long time ago when I was traveling in Suidmania alongside his majesty. I was approached by a peasant woman who wore a thick and long leather glove on her right hand. She asked me who I was and when I told her she dropped to her knees and begged me to save her son. She told me that she was the mother of three boys. One day her eldest son went to explore a nearby cave with his friends. When they didn’t return the village sheriff organized a posse to go look into the cave to rescue them. All they found was two small badly-burned corpses and an old chest full of valuables. Given the age of the chest and the fact that it bore the imperial Osminite seal, the sheriff deduced that it was a cache of war spoils that the Osminites looted during one of their invasions and hid away during one of their retreats. The items in the chest were all valuables belonging to some imperial nobleman from long ago, save for one: a strange medallion of unknown origin,”

As Rasmussen spoke, alarm bells began to sound in the minds of both Alexandra and Ekkehardt.

“The bodies of the two boys were too charred to identify. All that could be determined by examining them was that they were children, roughly the same size as the three missing boys, and that they had died recently. Without any evidence, the trail ran cold. None of the villagers knew what happened to the third boy or even which one of the three could still be alive. Things would have remained that way if the fires didn’t start,”

“Fires?” Ekkehardt asked.

“A few days after the villagers found the bodies, crops and livestock in the county began to catch fire in the middle of the night. In the case of livestock, it was especially uncanny. There was no evidence of the animals trying to run away or anything like that; it was like they were burned all at once. This went on for two weeks before a courier who had taken a wrong turn stumbled upon the cause of the fires: the eldest son of the peasant woman; the boy who had gone to play in the cave and never came back. He saw the boy roast a pig by breathing on it like a dragon. When the courier tried to talk to the child, the boy looked at him with cold dead eyes; as though the man had no right to speak to him or even be in his presence. He blew fire at the courier; just barely missing him. He was able to get away and alert the sheriff of the boy’s presence. The sheriff decided to go out and see the boy for himself and… he wasn’t as lucky...” Rasumussen explained. He then sighed and took a sip of wine.

“Once the villagers realized that their sheriff was dead, they grabbed whatever weapons they could find and formed another posse; this time to hunt down the boy. Armed with bows, hatchets, and pitchforks, they searched for the child. Unfortunately, the boy was also looking for them. He ended up baiting them into a trap and killed half their party with a single breath. He would have killed them all, but one member of the group was lucky enough to fire an arrow at the boy’s head at the last possible moment; killing him instantly.” Rasmussen explained. Schumacher set his wine glass down.

“Wait, so the kid died? Where are you going with this story?” Schumacher interjected. Schumacher was an older man with graying black hair that was fashioned into a bowl cut. He wore a simple brown robe; common attire for a scribe.

“You know how I said that the boy was the peasant woman’s eldest son? Well, she had two others and after her eldest son died his condition somehow moved to her middle son. That time, the villagers were able to capture him before he could hurt anybody. They had to use all of the chains in the village and put his head in a vise to keep him from moving it, but they were able to prevent him from hurting anyone; save for his mother. He blew fire on her right arm one day while she was trying to feed him; burned her so badly that when the skin on her arm healed it was leathery and hairless. Unfortunately, the boy turned into a living corpse during his confinement. It didn’t matter how much food he was given; something slowly ate away at his body over the course of two years until heart stopped beating. The villagers, anticipating what was to come, had the youngest son locked up a week or so before the middle son’s death. Just as they had predicted, he began to suffer the same fate as his older brothers.” Rasmussen explained. He then took a sip of wine.

“This is where I personally enter the story. This woman’s village was close to a castle that his majesty was overseeing the reconstruction of, so I was able to pop in and take a look at the boy without creating any serious problems for his majesty. When I agreed to see the boy, his mother led me to an abandoned Samudaayian4 temple from the time of Osminite rule. It was the only stone building in the vicinity of the village. I found him chained to the ground in the center of the main prayer hall. His head was fixed in an upward position so that any fire he breathed would bounce harmlessly off the high stone ceiling.” Rasmussen narrated. He then paused to take another sip of wine.

“For the next three months I divided my time between that boy and his majesty’s needs. Thankfully, his majesty never had any issues with his health during the entirety of his stay in Suidmania. One night, I found the cause of the boy’s condition completely by accident. At that time I was with his majesty and his entourage at the castle that was being rebuilt. It was an absolutely ancient and decrepit thing that was built by the Oriental Reman empire only to be taken by some Suidmanian tribe. After that it was fought over for decades by various Suidmanian tribes and petty kingdoms before the Osminites swooped in and conquered everything. A century or two later it would be constantly taken and retaken by Osminites and Ostermanians until one Osminite commander leveled the castle using trebuchets loaded with solid metal projectiles. Neither the Osminites nor the Ostermanians had expected this outcome. I don’t really see why this was the case, since neither side had ever put any effort into maintaining the place while they occupied it and it was built centuries prior by people who thought burning down their own capital was a perfectly reasonable response to losing a chariot race, but I guess that’s just hindsight talking. Anyways, I was taking a break from my duties one night when I decided to go exploring in the ruins of the castle. There, I found an old Hellastani codex written by an Oriental Reman monk named Akakios5 Papadopoulos6. I took the book back to our encampment and examined it in the privacy of my own tent. I was hoping that I had just uncovered a codex about medicine or Reman history, but the information contained in that codex was in regards to something far more arcane and sinister; something that people like us have no business with…” Rasmussen said, only to be cut off by Alexandra.

“Wait a minute, isn’t Papadopoulos that demon guy?” Alexandra blurted out, “I believe that Damien LeNoir referenced him quite a bit, though he was quite critical about some of the things Papadopoulos wrote, such as his description of the process required for the creation of chimera and…”

“Pardon me your highness, but are you saying that you read the works of Damien LeNoir, the Metrovingian occultist?” Schumacher interrupted.

“...yes…” Alexandra replied as her face stiffened.

“How did you even get access to that? Even looking at a book like that would require approval from the archbishop of Königsstadt and the court chaplain!” Schirmer barked.

“...some monk left the door to the restricted section of the imperial archives unlocked during his lunch break and I was kind of curious…” Alexandra said softly. Schirmer was about to say something, but Ekkehardt got ahead of him.

“Sir, in her highnesses defense, she didn’t inflict or intend to inflict any harm by her actions and I don’t think we should let minor things like this get in the way of the much bigger problem at hand,” Ekkehardt pointed out.

“Also this was a few years ago and I didn’t actually do anything with what I learned! I was just bored and all of the other books in the restricted section were either written in a language I couldn’t read or were some sort of weird erotica.” Alexandra explained in a frantic voice, desperate to defend herself.

“Well, I guess your actions didn’t have any ill-intent behind them and we really should be focused on - wait, what do you mean by ‘weird erotica’?” Schirmer said, his mouth running a few seconds ahead of his mind.

“Uh guys, I mean, Sir Schirmer and Lady Alexandra, do you think that we could get back to his highness condition?” Kurtzman, who up until this point had been silent, said. He was a rather cagey man. The man had very poor posture; he carried himself in a way that almost seemed as if it was done with the goal of making his already small body even smaller.

“Thank you Mr. Kurtzman, I’m sure we would all love to know more about the weird things the church is hiding from us, but we should probably return from our tangent.” Rasmussen agreed. There was no objection from anyone else in the room. Kurtzman exhaled as though a great burden had been lifted from him. He then pushed his glasses back into face and ran his hand through his short brown hair.

“Alexandra,” Rasmussen began, “In that LeNoir book, did you learn anything about something called a ‘moonman’?” he asked. Alexandra nodded her head.

“Yes, I have,” Alexandra responded, “LeNoir didn’t have much to say about them, compared to the other creatures he wrote about and he provided no illustrations of the creatures. According to LeNoir, they were a type of demon that were capable of shapeshifting. They could take on any form they pleased, but only during the day. Under moonlight they adopted their true appearance, one that LeNoir could only describe as ‘grotesque’. They could retain their human appearance by remaining in shelters during the night, but that would weaken them, since they need moonlight to survive the same way humans need food. Supposedly they each possessed some sort of unique ability that allowed them to bend reality to their will. In terms of that ability, they were like snowflakes: no two of them were alike. Unfortunately, there was one trait that all had in common: wickiness. Regardless of where they were or who they were dealing with they all took pleasure in causing as much pain and suffering to as many people as possible. LeNoir also provided a few examples of historical events that they supposedly took part in… of course, this is all just make-believe at the end of the day…”

“I’m afraid not,” Rasmussen said. There was no emotion in his voice or any expression on his face. Schirmer gave out a confused wince. Ekkehardt’s eyes darted around the room; examining the body language of everyone present. Alexandra wasn’t sure how she was going to respond to that.

“Uh… so, that’s a joke, right?” Messerschmitt asked. Egon Messerschmitt was a short and wide-built man with a shaved head and a thick gray mustache. He wore a thick leather apron and a little bit of black soot clung to his face.

“It’s not.” Rasmussen responded. He then turned to Vilmos, “Vilmos, could you bring me that black metal strong box and a pair of leather gloves?” he requested.

“You mean the one you tuh-tuh… the one you ordered me not to mess around with?” Vilmos asked.

“Yes, that one,” Rasmussen responded. Vilmos nodded, got up, and left the room.

“What does this box have to do with anything?” Schirmer demanded.

“You’ll see. Anyways, let me get back to what I discovered in Papadopoulos’ codex.” Rasmussen said, “In the codex, I found a section of text on moonmen. Most of it was more or less exactly what you said, but Papadopoulos included one anecdote at the end of this passage. He described a story of a wealthy Reman man, who attempted to harness the power of moonmen. In a way he succeeded. He was able to imprint the… essence of a moonman upon a medallion. Unfortunately for him, there were two notable problems with his handiwork. The first was that the medallion had to be made out of celestial iron. The second was far more problematic: the essence stored within the medallion wasn’t just a part of the moonman’s powers, but also part of the mooman’s personality. Once the medallion is touched by a human they would be taken over by that incorperal personality.”

“So the medallion the villagers found in the cave…” Alexandra began.

“Yes, exactly,” Rasmussen responded, “It was a medallion meant to store the essence of a moonman. When the first boy touched it, he became possessed by the moonman’s personality.”

“Wait a minute,” Messerschmitt interjected, “Neither of the boy’s brothers touched the medallion. How did they get possessed?”

“To be completely honest with you, I have no idea. All I know is that the moonman personality or spirit has the ability to jump from one host to another when its host dies. We don’t have enough information to say anything conclusive, but it appears that the moonman spirit prefers to go after siblings of it’s previous host.”

“So, you want us to believe that a spirit born from a monster from some weird book that is probably heretical has taken control of the crown prince?” Messerschmitt asked.

“That’s what all of the evidence seems to point to.” Rasmussen responded.

“I agree,” Ekkehardt said, “When I fought his highness he did things that just weren’t normal. He was able to climb walls and make his skin impenetrable. I’ve never seen anything else like it.” Ekkehardt looked towards the closet Siegfried was sleeping in as he thought about his battle with Alexander.

“I think he’s right, Mr. Messerschmitt. I know I saw Alexander touch some weird medallion that Agrippina had on her.” Alexandra added.

“Your highness, I don’t want to come off as rude, but I will believe in magic pieces of jewelry when I see them.” Messerschmitt responded. At that moment Vilmos returned to the room. He was carrying a large black strongbox. Vilmos leaned the box against his chest, exerting much energy just to carry it.

“I fuh-fuh-found it, master,” he announced. Alexandra could see a vein bulging on Vilmos’s forehead. Rasmussen nodded in approval.

“Perfect timing, Vilmos. Come here.” He responded. He then got up and helped Vilmos place the strongbox on a small folding table where everyone could see it.

“Alright, when I open this box, I want all of you to keep a safe distance from it and under no circumstances are any of you to touch what’s inside. Do you understand?” Rasmussen ordered as he put on a pair of long and thick leather gloves and grabbed a long pair of metal tweezers. Everyone nodded. He then turned to Schirmer.

“It’s Ludolf, right?” He asked. Schirmer nodded and said yes. “Since you’re the only one of us with a weapon, I want you to kill anyone that breaks my ‘no touching’ rule,” he said with no emotion in his voice.

“What?” Schirmer spat out.

“You’ll understand when you see what I’ve got here.” Rasmussen replied. He then produced a key from his robes and unlocked the thick lid of the strongbox. To Alexandra’s surprise, the strongbox had one unusual trait that made it very different from those that she saw her father and brother use: it’s storage area. The strongboxes she had seen before were made of metal that was, in the most heavy duty of strongboxes, about as thick as a pinky finger was long. The rest of the strongboxes’ volume was just empty space used for storage. This strongbox was mostly metal. When Rasmussen opened the strongbox, Alexandra could see that the storage area that it provided was about the size of a slice of bread. Everything else was one lump of metal. He then reached in with his tweezers and picked up the sole object stored within the strongbox: a strange medallion. It was constructed of some sort of white metal and it’s design bore no resemblance to any jewelry that Alexandra (someone who had seen jewelry from every part of the known world) had seen before. Within the center of the medallion there was ruby gemstone cut into a square shape.

Rasmussen then picked up a long metal pointer and tapped the gemstone in the center of the medallion. Suddenly the medallion was engulfed in a fireball the size of a fist. Alexandra could feel the heat from the fireball despite the fact that she was some distance away from the medallion. It was as though someone put a candle in front of her face. For some reason, she felt a breeze moving towards the fireball as the room was filled with a crackling sound. After a few moments Alexandra saw a face within the fireball. At first she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Then the face opened its mouth.

“Burn! Burn! I will burn you!” It shouted with a voice full of malice and agony. The fireball began to grow bright and expand. Alexandra now felt as though she was standing in front of a large bonfire. Just as the situation felt as though it was going to get out of control, Rasmussen dropped the medallion back into the strongbox and shut the lid on it. He then pressed down on the lid as he struggled to get the lock back onto the strongbox. Once the lock was secured he sat back down as the strongbox reddenned. Schumacher looked as though he was about to say something, but Rasmussen cut him off.

“Don’t worry. That’s normal. It should burn itself out in a few minutes.” He said.

“That… that wuh…” Messerschmitt spat out.

“One of the medallions I mentioned? Yes; yes it was,” Rasmussen answered, “That medallion was the one the villagers brought back from the cave. The fire you saw was created by the spirit housed within it; the same spirit that possessed the boys from the village. I was able to use a recipe for a potion I found in Papadopoulos’ codex to expel the spirit from the boy and return it to the medallion. Once I did that the boy returned to normal. It was like there was nothing wrong with him in the first place.” Suddenly Alexandra spoke up.

“So you’re saying that you can fix Alexander?” She interjected.

“Well, technically yes, but practically… I would need someone who could administer the potion to his highness…”

“Done!” Schirmer announced, “With my influence within the gendarmerie and knowledge of the imperial palace, I’m sure I could reach his highness.”

“That could work,” Ekkehardt added, “There are still people within the palace that are sympathetic to our cause. If we could get even a fraction of them on our side then it could be possible to get to Alexander without having to draw blood.”

“Hey, this all well and good, but even if you could get this potion to his highness, there is still the issue of making it.” Rasmussen explained.

“Well, you did that before, so why can’t you do that again?” Messerschmitt asked.

“Because it requires one particularly rare ingredient, one that not even I have on hand.” Rasmussen answered.

“What is it? I’m sure that if we can pool our resources together and maybe get some help from our friends we can get enough money to purchase it.” Messerschmit suggested.

“I’m afraid that’s the problem. We can’t exactly purchase it,” Rasmussen responded, “Most merchants that deal in medicinal substances don’t even believe that it exists. The active ingredient of the potion is the blood of a moonman. It doesn’t have to be the same moonman that was used to create the medallion, but it has to be a moonman; the more powerful the better.”

“Well, where did you get moonman blood when you made that potion for the little boy in Suidmania?” Alexandra asked.

“The church has a reliquary located in the city of Čistgrad7, just two days from the village by horse. Inside that reliquary was a small vial of moonman blood that was just sitting there for decades; maybe centuries. It was just enough to make the potion,”

“Oh, how did you convince the church to let you use it?” Alexandra asked.

“I didn’t.” Rasmussen said bluntly, “I was able to swap it out for a vial of goat’s blood and they are still none the wiser. That’s the reason why I never publicly spoke about these events. If I was able to acquire the moonman blood legitimately, then every scribe, nobleman, and physician on the Yerbian continent would have heard about it by now. I actually have a lot of notes written down about the whole ordeal, so that I can have my associates publish it after my death. Still, none of this matters unless one of you knows where we can get some moonman blood…”

“And what if I do know where to get some moonman blood?” Schumacher interjected.

“Excuse me?” Rasmussen blurted out.

“I think I know where we can find some mooonman blood. I think that there is a living moonman in Nordfell…”

“You think? What evidence are you basing this off of?” Schirmer demanded.

“Well, it’s a long story. I have this… uh fascination with morbid topics. I’m not some sort of sexual degenerate or anything like that, I just find things like murders and demons interesting. I also wound up learning about moonmen when my boss sent me on some errand within the imperial archives, something about crop yields in Barbalunga, I got distracted and started reading about records about mass killings within the empire. I eventually stumbled upon a series of letters discussing someone called ‘The Cursemaker’...”

“Oh, you mean the guy who supposedly had the ability to make people kill each other?” Alexandra interrupted.

“Um, yeah. How did you… oh nevermind,” Schumacher said, “Anyways, I started reading about this Cursemaker guy in my free time. I became obsessed with him. I learned the details of every single murder in and out. I think I even figured out what his first name is. I was, and probably still am, the single greatest expert on this guy in the empire. Then, everything changed one night when I was drinking with a friend of mine. He told me about how he was tasked with inspecting the books and codexes in the restricted section. It’s standard procedure; just do a quick look around to make sure nothing is damaged. Long story short: he got bored and started reading about demons; probably from that LeNoir book you were talking about. He started telling me all about demons, including moonmen. That’s when something clicked inside my head: the Cursemaker’s abilities sounded a lot like something a moonman could do and his actions sounded a lot like something a moonman would do. At first I thought that this was just some stupid conincidence, but then I checked the astronomical records. Every one of the Cursemaker’s murders on the record took place during a time of the month where the moon was bright in the sky. His most gruesome murders; the ones with the highest number of fatalities, took place on days preceding full moons, and none of his murders occured on new moons. The more I looked into this, the more everything added up,” Schumacher explained.

“Okay, but none of this explains how we can get our hands on some of his blood.” Messerschmitt remarked.

“Well, what if I told you that I have some information that would suggest that the Cursemaker is in one specific location and is in a state where he’s too incapacitated to move or put up a fight?” Schumacher asked. Messerschmitt nodded his head in approval.

“Okay, go on…” He replied.

“I have this pet theory on what happened to the Cursemaker; why he disappeared. According to the imperial records, the Cursemaker’s last known set of murders took place in Peschtia. He ordered a group of thirty villagers to grab whatever tools they had lying around and fight each other to the death with them; like some sort of Reman gladiator tournament. Unlike many of his previous murders, this one had a witness who would live to give a testimony to the gendarmerie. She was a shepherd-woman by the name of Boglárka8 Juhász9. Ms. Juhász was away from her village when the Cursemaker arrived. By the time she returned, he was already in the middle of his killings. Thankfully, she was smart enough to hide and ended up observing the situation from a distance. In her testimony, she said that one of the villagers that the Cursemaker was controlling resisted him and struck him in the back with a hatchet. The villager and the Cursemaker then spoke to each other for a few moments before the Cursemaker used his powers to make the villager snap his own neck. Due to the distances involved and the fact that Ms. Juhász had a hearing impairment, she wasn’t able to make out what was said. Ms. Juhász then saw the Cursemaker order the remaining villagers to kill themselves before fleeing from the village. After that, there were no more recorded murders that can be linked to the Cursemaker. I thought that point was where the trail went cold, but it wasn’t!” Schumacher explained. Despite the grim nature of what he was talking about, he seemed absolutely enraptured by his own words. It was as though he was finally able to release something that he had bottled up within him for a long time.

“So you found another Cursemaker murder?” Schirmer asked.

“Yes!” Schumacher replied with the energy of a teacher’s pet who just got asked to answer a question in front of the class, “...well sort of… I’ll get to it. Sometime after the Cursemaker’s final murders some villagers in Nordfell started complaining about an impenetrable white dome in some forest called ‘the Frauenwald’. I didn’t think much of it until I learned of two things; the first of them being moondomes,”

“Moondomes?” Ekkehardt repeated.

“Yeah. It’s supposedly a power that moonmen are capable of. According to LeNoir, they are able to will an impenetrable white dome into existence. This is supposed to be a last ditch defense mechanism for when they are wounded,” Alexandra explained

“Yep. That’s what I was also told,” Schumacher agreed, “The first reports of it came in just after the Cursemaker was struck by that villager. Now, that got me to believe that the Cursemaker might have been gravely wounded by the villager,”

“But, I thought that moonmen were supposed to be extremely hard to kill. How could one villager with a hatchet gravely wound one?” Alexandra asked.

“Well, they may have the ability to look like humans, but it’s entirely possible that their biology is completely different to us. Maybe that villager hit the Cursemaker in some sort of weak spot?” Rasmussen suggested.

“I think you two are overlooking a major problem in Schumacher’s theory: if the Cursemaker was wounded in Peschtia then why did he go all the way to Nordfell to put up this ‘moondome’ thing? That doesn’t make much sense to me.” Schirmer asked.

“That’s what I thought too!” Schumacher replied, “I thought it had to be a coincidence, but then I started researching the history of Nordfell; specifically the history of crime in Nordfell. This started out as being an assignment given to me by my superiors; completely unrelated to my interest in the Cursemaker. They wanted me to conduct a survey of violent crime within the county. This was basically a fool’s errand since reports of violent crime are Nordfell’s single greatest export. I spent three weeks analyzing and tabulating crime reports until I found one report of three murders and an assault in a village called ‘Weisshart’. According to the report, these crimes happened all at once right before the Cursemaker murders began. It started off with the assailant walking into the village’s bakery. He gets into an argument with the baker and a second man, the village’s butcher. This argument turns violent and the next thing anyone knows, the interior of the bakery has been turned upside-down and the three men are fighting with knives in the street. When it’s all over the baker, the butcher, and the village elder are all dead and a fourth man is wounded. Here is where it gets interesting: the fourth man, the one who was only wounded; he was some sort of soldier or militaman who tried to break up the fight. He was carrying a crossbow at one point he aimed it at the assailant, but the assailant was somehow able to get him to shoot himself with his own crossbow. This was followed by the assailant successfully disappearing into a nearby forest. This was especially odd when you consider that many of the witnesses claimed that he had multiple severe knife wounds,”

“So you’re saying that those four men in Weisshart were the first victims of the Cursemaker?” Schirmer asked.

“Yes!” Schumacher answered, “Think about it this way: We don’t know why he was arguing with the baker. It’s entirely possible that he didn’t go into Weisshart with the intention of killing anyone, or at least without the intention of killing anyone that particular day. Maybe the baker or the butcher said something that ticked him off and he responded violently. This is the event where he first got to experience killing and probably what got him to realize that he enjoyed it.” Schumacher argued.

“That would make sense,” Schirmer added, “I would like to look over the records myself, but none of what you’re telling me sounds like these actions are premeditated. Still that does raise the question: Why not just tell the baker and the butcher to slit their own throats? Why bother getting into a knife-fight with them?”

“Maybe he didn’t understand the extent of his own powers?” Rasmussen suggested. Schirmer and Schumacher looked confused.

“You said that, at least as far as the records are concerned, this is his first murder. Maybe moonmen have some sort of life-cycle, like what humans have, and he was still just a child… or maybe the more correct term would be ‘developing’?” Rasmussen elaborated.

“There are two more things I have to say about the murders in Weisshart,” Schumacher said, “Both of these facts back up my theory that the Weisshart murderer was the Cursemaker. The first is his name. I’ve read two eyewitness reports from survivors of the Cursemaker’s attacks that claim that he used the name ‘Cedric’...”

“Cedric?” Alexandra asked, pronouncing the foregin and exotic name with some difficulty. ‘What a weird name…’ she thought to herself.

“Yes, it’s apparently from the islands to the northwest of Yerb,” Schumacher answered, “Now, according to the daughter of the baker in Weisshart, the Weisshart murderer would also use the name ‘Cedric’ to identify himself in the days leading up to the murders. She said that he was some sort of hermit that lived in the woods next to the village, which brings me to my final point. I had to spend two hours searching through the archive’s cartology wing to confirm it, but I swear this is true: the forest next to Weisshart is the Frauenwald; the same forest where the moon dome is!”

“So you’re saying that he’s hiding there, because, to him, that’s a safe place that he’s intimately familiar with?” Schirmer asked.

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. The only problem is that I don’t really understand why he’s in this dome, what he’s doing in there, or how long he intends to stay there. I know that it was there a year ago, because that’s when an imperial official mentioned it in a report. Well, there’s also the problem of how to break a moondome and I don’t really know what to do about that.” Schumacher explained. The room was silent for a moment. Then, out of nowhere, Messerschmit spoke up.

“...I think I might know of a sword that can break a moon dome…”

Brandt Castle (present time)

Alexandra winced in pain as she gulped down the last bit of her meal. She could feel her stomach churn as it struggled to process the food. With Adrian nowhere in sight, she decided to get up and stretch her legs. She found herself drawn to the one painting hanging from the wall. Alexandra casually walked up to the painting, stopping next to another girl who was also looking at the painting. Unlike, Alexandra, this girl was dressed in feminine clothes. She was somewhat short and wore her dark brown hair in a single braided ponytail. While she was definitely of Yerbian extraction, her skin was a slightly darker shade than that of Alexandra’s or Ekkehardt’s and she was dressed in the clothes of a barmaid. Strangely, her dress and apron had a number of stains on them, each of a variety of colors. Alexandra couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was clearly something odd about her. Despite this, she decided to just ignore her and focus on the painting. It was a scene depicting five people. The first four were definitely related; each sharing brown hair and blue eyes. These four individuals consisted of a middle-aged man, a sturdily built young man with wide shoulders and a bright smile, a frail and sickly-looking young man who was the only person within the painting to be seated, and a young woman. Next to the young woman there was the fifth individual: a thin man. He had short, jet black hair and high cheekbones. He was incredibly pale and his green eyes appeared as if they were looking directly at Alexandra.

“So, you like paintings too?” The girl beside Alexandra spoke up. Her voice was a little high-pitched and she spoke as though she was trying to talk someone out of attacking her. It was faint, but Alexandra could detect a very mild Strivalian accent. Alexandra took a moment to consider her question. She had been painted multiple times before, but never really cared much for the art.

“Uh, it’s alright, I guess…” She responded. The girl’s brown eyes lit up with excitement.

“That’s incredible! I always wanted to meet another person who appreciates art! Ever since my grandfather died I haven’t had anyone to talk to about painting. My parents absolutely hate it, so I can’t talk to them. What’s your name, by the way? I’m Rosalba10 Artemisia11 Zimmerman, but everyone just calls me Rose.” She shot out.

“My name’s Al...f; Alf Neuman.” Alexandra responded.

“Oh. That’s a nice name,” Rose replied, “Have you ever been to Strivalia, Alf? My grandfather told me that there are painters in some of the Strivalian states that are doing things with color and perspective that haven’t been done since Reman times. He said that he’s seen a lot of it himself. He traveled all over Strivalia as a painter when he was younger. He actually lived in Barbalunga until those no-good-dirty-rotten-throne-stealing von Adlers sent him here,” Rose explained, the words rushing from her mouth like water out of a fountain.

“Oh, I didn’t know that…” Alexandra began, only to be cut off by Rose.

“Yeah, it’s all because my grandfather was commissioned by some baron to paint a depiction of the martyrdom of Saint Calvus of Mizraim, but the baron took offense to it, because he thought that my grandpa was ‘coding’ the Reman soldiers in the picture as Ostermanians and their Kroppian prisoners as Strivalians. I don’t even understand how that is supposed to work, since everyone in that picture was supposed to be of the same ethnicity. I think that he was just trying to weasel his way out of paying, but that’s just me. At least grandpa was able to paint this picture here after he was forced to move here.” Rose complained and she looked at the picture. For some reason she was unable to make eye-contact with Alexandra.

“Wait, your grandfather painted this picture?” Alexandra asked. She wasn’t sure if she could politely exit the conversation, but at least by asking this she might end up learning something useful.

“Yes. It’s a portrait of Count Claudius’ family shortly before the Time of Red Snow began. The old guy is his father, the strong-looking guy is his brother, the girl is his sister, and the guy in the chair is the count himself. Now the majority of this painting is supposed to be interpreted literally, but there are many small details that were added not because they were actually there when the scene was painted, but because of the symbolic values they held. For instance, the groma behind the elder von Brandt symbolizes his ambition to reinvigorate the family’s finances through the exploitation of the county’s natural resources, while the shoes next to Lady von Brandt’s feet symbolize…” Rose explained, speaking without any breaks as though she was in a trance right up until Alexandra interrupted her.

“Wait, what about the guy on the right? Who is he? Is he supposed to be a symbol or something?” She asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I must have forgotten about him. That guy was a former nobleman from one of those islands to the northwest. He was exiled from his home country due to some war or something like that and he bounced around Yerb for a while until he wound up here. Ended up becoming real close with the count’s family for some reason. I think his name was Cedric of Sortpool.” Rose explained. Alexanda’s heart skipped a beat.

Before she could ask any other question, the door to the hall opened behind her.