Year 942,

  After parting ways with Lyndabel and Radios, Viryl headed northeast of the entrance courtyard of Arathia's palace, towards a complex of modest-looking buildings. The mysterious quarter was built into a depression of the terrain adjacent to the walls. The concrete road that ran alongside the first buildings was surmounted by a series of arches, which became increasingly wider until it became a real underpass.

  Numerous doors opened on both sides of the tunnel and anarchic steps interspersed the path, forcing Viryl to climb up and down restlessly. The forks in the path were continuous, and Viryl began to feel lost. The silence was absolute and there were no signs of servants around.

  Now lost in the maze of tunnels, the knight eventually got to a dead end. The tunnel ended in a wooden door painted red. A door that, for some reason Viryl couldn't fully grasp, seemed more important than all the others. Going back and flying over the buildings for an aerial reconnaissance was the least risky way to continue the exploration, but Viryl felt strangely attracted to that stupid door. He tried to open it, but it was locked. He shouldered it down.

  Beyond the threshold was a long, dim room that smelled of incense. Viryl ventured inside with caution. Along the stone walls were niches closed by red curtains. Some of the tents were apart, and inside the niches were benches and wardrobes. The best hypothesis Viryl could come up with was that it was some kind of changing room.

  From the changing room, Viryl accessed a huge bathroom. There were tubs full of steaming water and fountains at eye level that splashed down into stone grates on the floor. At the opposite side of the room were marble benches on which spotless tablecloths and soft, colorful cotton dressing gowns lay. Viryl began to understand. It was just a guess, but the place looked awfully like the entrance of a brothel.

  The bathroom led to a stairwell. The ramp went straight up along the bathroom wall, and soft light came in from a series of intricately decorated mullioned windows set six feet high on the opposite side. At the top of the staircase was a landing onto which a single door opened. Before going any further, Viryl felt the need to swallow. The knight slowly opened the door and was immediately met with daylight and female cries.

  To Viryl the place looked like the cloister of a monastery. In the center was a perfectly lush and well-kept garden, with small ponds and fountains, and around a quadriporticus onto which countless small cells opened. The substantial difference was this: there were no monks, but beautiful girls in scanty clothes who, as soon as they saw the knight arriving in his bloody armor, started running everywhere and quacking like ducks.

  In the unbearable chaos, Viryl perceived a clear call for help. He didn’t receive it through his hearing, but it was imprinted directly in his mind, like a brand.

  “Find me.”

  Viryl instinctively began walking towards a place he didn't even know. As he proceeded down the corridor, he watched with detachment as the women fled in terror from him. Any other knight would have probably lost his composure being surrounded by so many cuties. Some girls were of exotic and unknown ethnicities, others seemed to come from the continent of Boreatica. Were they slaves? They didn't seem to be doing too badly. Before his arrival, they were engaging in leisure activities, such as singing, painting, and reading. Their bodies were toned and their hairstyles fancy. They wore fine silk clothes, expensive stuff, certainly not something any commoner could afford.

  “Here,” the voice implored Viryl again.

  Viryl's instinct led him to the other side of the portico, in front of a specific door, relatively distant from all the others along the wall. Without much thought, he opened it and was engulfed by thick steam. He couldn't see a thing in that room, but judging by the screams there must have been other women inside. Viryl took a few uncertain steps into the smoky environment. It looked like some kind of hot spring bath, but he had never seen a place like that. It was hot and difficult to breathe. He didn't find the sensation particularly pleasant. Suljukians have strange ways of entertaining themselves, he thought.

  Trying to ignore the steam-clad girls surrounding him he went straight on his way and through the steam bath. He emerged from the other side of the room, into a shadowy corridor.

  “Over here... please hurry,” the voice pleaded again. Even though it was not possible to discern the qualities of the interlocutor's voice, in that telepathic communication a certain anguish was palpable.

  “Who are you?” Viryl tried to respond to the voice in his head.

  “The court eunuch is torturing me. I was undisciplined,” the voice continued in its monologue. Since the voice hadn’t answered him, Viryl thought that form of telepathy to be monodirectional. Furthermore, it was a peculiar phenomenon: just as when Obelard and Camelia had read his mind, Viryl could not perceive the interlocutor was using magic.

  Despite the first unsuccessful attempt, Viryl tried to communicate with the voice again, “What do you mean you were undisciplined?”

  “I knew you were coming so I tried to free myself... the other harem guards accompanied the grand dame and some of the Herosk's favored courtesans to him so that they could follow his escape... only the eunuch was left to guard us, so I tried to stab him but I wasn't fast enough.”

  So he could communicate with the voice, Viryl thought. Or perhaps the voice had simply anticipated what his question would be. Before Viryl could decide which of the two hypotheses was the most likely a moan tore through his mind, and for a moment he felt like he shared the voice’s pain. It was atrocious. That burning sensation persuaded him that the interlocutor’s time was running out.

  Viryl let his instincts guide him again. He chose a door to open at the end of the corridor, and beyond he found a tidy, sandalwood-scented oriental-style bedroom. There was a second door at the back. Viryl inhaled and exhaled deeply. The gloves of his ethereal armor had become slick with sweat. He sensed he had reached the point where the mysterious interlocutor wanted to take him.

  The knight raised his hand towards the door handle. He lowered it, and then slowly moved the door aside.

  He looked inside.

  Viryl had never believed in love at first sight. Or perhaps he did for a brief period in his adolescence and changed his mind after a series of embarrassing first-hand experiences. Sometimes he had experienced an instant crush – Darlah was the best example – but it had always been one-sided. To win the heart of the crush who had made him lose his mind, Viryl had always had to work hard. And despite his efforts, he usually ended up with a new pullback to add to his collection.

  That time it was different. From the moment his visor-hidden eyes met the hazel ones of the pilloried girl on the other side of the room, Viryl knew with complete certainty that his feeling was reciprocated. It was like he had felt the crack of a spark, he couldn't have explained it otherwise.

  It took Viryl a few moments to divert his attention from the girl's gaze, but he was eventually forced to become aware of the scene as a whole.

  The room was circular, dimly lit by about twenty torches hanging on the wall, and in the center opened the mouth of a dark well. It was a full-blown torture room, full of machines with cruel and abstruse uses and tools that were used to mortify unsuspected organs. A man, not old but definitely wrinkled, with big ears and a messy white beard, had tied the girl to a pillory and was whipping her. The girl's dress was all torn, and she had long, purple marks on her body. A sign of the countless lashes received. The Infidel was ranting in his gibberish and waving his whip at Viryl. Feeling his blood stir, Viryl decided he was going to make him swallow that shitty whip.

  Without further hesitation, Viryl headed towards the eunuch threateningly, but black tentacles emerged from the chasm and wrapped themselves around his limbs. Viryl did not immediately understand the gravity of the situation, and instead of trying to extricate himself, he tried to identify the Ferenkelt to which those appendages belonged. Not only was he unable to find an answer, but he was not even able to foresee the irresistible force that would drag him into the abyss.

  In less than a second Viryl was engulfed by darkness, and then pangs of pain lit up like flashes of lightning in the night.

  His ethereal armor was pierced in at least a dozen places, and sharp teeth sank into his flesh.

  His fall stopped, and he hung like a scarecrow on a pitchfork.

  He immediately lost his breath and felt his muscles go limp as if he had been injected with a paralyzing toxin. For the first time since he had been accoladed, Viryl experienced a few moments of pure panic and could not maintain even a shred of clarity.

  He was sure he would die.

  Then he heard the girl's cry. He guessed she had been thrown down.

  Viryl feared she would fall to the bottom of the pit, but the scream came at breakneck speed and then the girl's warm, soft limbs wrapped around his armored chest. The girl kept her grip firm, but let out a series of piercing screams. If she suffered the same injuries as Viryl she would bleed out within minutes.

  The mere thought was enough for Viryl to regain his determination.

  Summoning the last of his strength, Viryl reached to his belt and pulled out a vial of Spitfire tonic. He swallowed it blindly. Then he raised his arms fighting against the paralyzing toxin and hugged the girl's body to him.

  There was one spell he had resolved never to use unless he found himself in a corner. His ace in the hole. And at that moment he was definitely in a corner.

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  Viryl of the White Gale released the spell “Tornado Mower”.

  A devastating whirlwind was unleashed in the depths of the well. The stone walls fell apart and took on the shape of sharp stone blades and began to whirl wildly. Outside the eye of the storm, where Viryl and the girl remained firmly embraced, there was a real meat grinder.

  The whirlwind devoured the walls of the well and expanded and rose to the ceiling of the torture room and then even higher. The eunuch backed away in fear, but the floor gave way under his feet and he too was swallowed up by the vortex. He was sliced ??into irregular chunks.

  The whirlpool continued to rage and expand until the entire building collapsed, and it kept roaring for a couple of minutes. Then the wind died down and Viryl could finally see the girl's face in the sunlight. She was even more beautiful, so illuminated. But she was losing a lot of blood.

  Viryl quickly flew over the rubble of the palace and placed the girl on a bed of stones. Once on firm ground, he first drank a potion of cerulean infusion, then he packed the girl's wounds with medicated gauze and he eventually looked in his belt for an antidote tablet for the paralyzing toxins. He wasn't sure if it worked against that specific poison, but after swallowing the tablet the girl immediately began to breathe more regularly.

  The girl looked at Viryl with serene eyes. Her beautiful olive skin had faded from anemia, but she now seemed out of danger. Watching the mounds of her large breasts beneath her tattered robes rise and fall placidly, and her soft body rest on that pile of stones, Viryl felt a peace he had never felt before.

  At the end of his long and dangerous pilgrimage, the knight had found something precious and unexpected. Or perhaps, on the contrary, something that had always been destined for him, a meeting written in the stars.

  “What is your name?” Viryl asked the girl.

  And then he heard an echo in his mind again. “Melazam.”

  *****

  Lyndabel destroyed the pier and sunk all the ships moored in the harbor. She killed the soldiers who resisted her and let those unwilling to fight escape. Then she went back to the eastern gate of the palace, broke through, and began to climb the slope that led down to the eastern wall.

  A single path wound toward the white marble balconies of Arathia's palace lookout, gleaming nearly half a mile away.

  When Lyndabel was halfway there, a black procession rolled down the hill. The earth began to shake. Ten five-legged pachyderms advanced toward Lyndabel. At the head of the formation, there was a specimen that stood out slightly above the others, and Al-Suleym held the reins. It wasn't as large as the one the Herosk rode during the Battle of Surelekem, but it must have been the best left in Elkaroth's stables.

  Lyndabel's body shook with overwhelming laughter. As soon as she regained her composure, she charged. She arrived under the trunk of the Herosk’s elephant and then with a leap she launched herself towards the tail of the enemy column.

  As she landed, Lyndabel unleashed the “Major Explosion” spell. It was weaker than the version of the spell enhanced by the tonic of Spitfire, but the blast radius affected more than half of the elephants. The enormous beasts and the warriors on top of them were annihilated.

  The leaders at the head of the formation panicked and galloped down the slope to regroup. They weren't fast enough. Lyndabel chased them one by one, and cut them down with the “Spear of Light” spell loaded into her greatsword.

  She left the Herosk’s elephant last. She cut it down with a single blow, and Al-Suleym dismounted and fled. This time, however, there was no army to take shelter behind. Lyndabel ran after him and threw him to the ground, into the faded grasses that covered the slope.

  Al-Suleym asked Lyndabel for mercy in his broken Classian, “Stop! Stop! I give up! I am your prisoner! Do what you want with me, take what you want! Don't kill me!”

  Lyndabel laughed madly, then smashed his right shin with a heel kick. “I'm afraid I can't do it, you know? I received a very specific request.”

  With ruthless methodicality Lyndabel proceeded to smash the enemy's second tibia, then the femurs, then she stopped. She would continue with the pelvis, then the ribs, both clavicles, then the wrists, ulnae and radii, and humeri, but each blow was followed by inhuman screams and insults in a mixture of Classian and Suljukian. The pain had brought tears to the Herosk's eyelids. As much as Lyndabel would have liked to follow her friend's instructions to the letter, she couldn't help but feel pity for that disgusting monster.

  Therefore she grabbed her broadsword in two hands and brought it down on the opponent's neck to free him from the suffering. The decapitation was clean and Al-Suleym's head rolled a couple of times before coming to rest among the grasses that covered the hill. Lyndabel bent down and picked up her trophy.

  According to Calgara's plan, Lyndabel was now supposed to spit on Al-Suleym's corpse. But one day not too far away Lyndabel would place the head of the hated Infidel in Calgara's hands, and if she wanted to spit on it she would be free to do so herself.

  Lyndabel looked at the sky. It was now late afternoon and the sun would soon descend behind the bulk of the building. Relieved, she set off again on the path that led to the lookout. Finally, she and Viryl were free to go home.

  *****

  The three knights met in front of a mausoleum in the center of Arathia's palace. They arrived almost together, although they had not arranged to meet there. The injured girl accompanying Viryl immediately caught Lyndabel's attention, but she asked no questions.

  Radios did instead, “I thought we were here to fight, not to seduce girls. Who is she, Viryl?”

  “It's a long story but I'll try to keep it short,” Viryl replied, “There was a group of buildings to the north and I explored them, thinking they were the servants' quarters. Instead, it was a harem. This girl was undergoing corporal punishment and the harem guardian was about to kill her, so I saved her.”

  “And this was your contribution to our fight?” Radios asked again boldly.

  “Don't be an idiot, Radios. You explored a stupid garden. Should I think you spent your time picking daisies?”

  “Oh, you don't know what was lingering in that cursed garden and what I did after I finished there.”

  “And you have no idea what beast lurked in that fucking harem and, for that matter, you have no idea what I did after I finished there.”

  “Oh, of course, now you will tell me you destroyed the infidel barracks while taking that ball and chain with you!”

  Without even realizing it, Viryl was dragged into the game of boasting that Radios often enjoyed playing with Nomenas. “Do I really have to tell you? Yes, I was the one who destroyed the barracks north of the palace!”

  “So nice, I instead not only destroyed the barracks to the south but I also – ”

  “Silence!” Lyndabel thundered. Under her arm, she carried the severed head of Ashlem al-Suleym. The one who could have boasted of the biggest trophy was her, but those were not her intentions. “Soon it will be night, what do we do now?”

  “I guess we could sleep here. Tomorrow we will collect some supplies from the palace stores and return to Surelekem,” Viryl proposed.

  “What if some of the Herosk’s men will come to us seeking revenge?” Radios objected.

  “Well, we'll take shifts,” Viryl retorted.

  “Yes, but how will we behave with the Herosk court?” Lyndabel asked, “As I was coming here, I met the grand dame of Al-Sulyem, some high officials, and some courtesans preparing to escape. They didn't appear hostile, but now all these people no longer have a leader. We should restore some semblance of order before we leave.”

  “I would leave that problem to the Crusader vanguard who will arrive in a few days,” Radios said, “We have already done enough here.”

  “I’m with Radios on this, I just want to get out of here,” Viryl agreed.

  “And that courtesan you brought with you? Aren't you afraid that she might be involved in the riots that will take place in the palace?” Lyndabel insisted.

  “She's coming with us,” Viryl stated.

  Outraged, Lyndabel looked at him. “Sorry, what?”

  “This girl's name is Melazam,” Viryl explained, pointing to her, “She's mute, but she understands Ferlonian. She managed to explain to me that she was enslaved by infidels and that she was brought here against her will. I think you have nothing against bringing her with us so that she can obtain the freedom she aspires to.”

  Viryl had told a bunch of lies.

  After rescuing her, Melazam had shown him her memories. She was not mute and did not know Ferlonian. She came far from the east and venerated a deity that Viryl had never heard about. Lyndabel would have considered her a simple heretic but, in her homeland, she had been a princess and a priestess. The Suljukians had conquered her kingdom and deported her. But she didn’t lose hope. Among Melazam's divine gifts, in addition to telepathy, there was that of clairvoyance. She knew Viryl would come to save her. She knew he was her man. She knew she would spend the rest of her life by his side. She knew he would love and protect her like no one had ever been able to do.

  “Well, if that's the case…” Lyndabel couldn't finish the sentence.

  If that were the case, Lyndabel certainly couldn't have stopped the girl from following them on their way back to Ferlonia. Yet there was a twinkle in Viryl's gaze that didn't convince her. She knew him too well not to realize he was lying. But she preferred to let it go. She thought that if she insisted she would simply look hysterical.

  “She scares me,” Melazam confided telepathically to Viryl.

  Viryl replied with a reassuring thought, “You have nothing to worry about: she is Lyndabel, my best friend. And she is a kind-hearted woman. She could never hurt you.”

  Thirty-one years later, third day of Neviticus, 12.32 pm, Leapolis, the canteen of the headquarters of the Knightly Order of Ferlonia,

  Geltram Roncistelli had been just served a portion of chicken escalope flavored with Marsala, sided by plenty of mashed potatoes. With a plate overflowing with the hot yellow mush in his hands, he scanned the long rows of tables, looking for a place to sit. Kalira and Bersept were having lunch alone, in a secluded spot. Geltram had not seen them for over a month. He thought it was a good opportunity to have a little chat. He was curious to know what they thought of their promising careers as novice knights.

  He approached the two friends and asked, “Do you mind if I keep you company?”

  Bersept responded with a burp.

  Kalira asked back, “Do you really need to ask us that?”

  Sitting down with a grin, Geltram retorted, “Well, you never know.”

  As Geltram began to eat his meal Kalira asked him again, without respite, “Been busy lately, huh?”

  Geltram took a spoon still dirty of mashed potatoes out of his mouth and pointed it at Kalira and Bersept. He replied, “From what I heard, you and Bersept are doing well too. Now they send you out to hunt Fekoro without any supervision, and that's not a privilege they accord to many novices.”

  “Come on, that’s not such a big deal. You, on the other hand, have fallen into the favor of the intelligence department. You raised quite a fuss by investigating that anarchist cell.”

  “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Bersept commented.

  Geltram downplayed, “Maybe, but if the investigations went so smoothly that time it was only thanks to Anker and his automatons. The head of intelligence would have wanted him on the team too.”

  Bersept burped again. “Well. Our friend was quite an imbecile. He wasted a unique opportunity to keep up with his bullshit.”

  “Oh, you know Anker. He felt guilty for that skinny doll. The absurd thing is that he has taken a Vow of Dedication for nothing! I’d pay to be here to see the face he makes when he returns to Leapoli and finds out how things really went!” Kalira added, excited by the gossip.

  “Unfortunately he couldn't have known it back then,” Geltram said, almost regretfully.

  “He could have read our messages, at least. He doesn't even receive them anymore. Who knows where he ended up following that bald dude,” Kalira sighed.

  “Knowing him, he won't return until he gets that damned Exoplion back. Or maybe he'll come back in a coffin. I don't think there's a third option,” Geltram observed, cutting a small piece of chicken escalope.

  Bersept sniffed and sat back in his chair. "Bah. Time will tell."