Gaia shifted in her sleep as she stirred. Shifting again she realised that she was on a bed somewhere that she did not recognise. She was still clothed, but she could feel that the fabric did not quite fit her as it once had. she sat up and glanced around, finding herself in one of the orders cells. She blinked, not quite understanding what had occurred, or why there was a dull ache in her shoulder. Gaia gradually became aware of the woman standing by the bed.

“Get up. we need to get going.” she barked, roughly passing clothing to Gaia.
She rolled gently from beneath the sheet into a sitting position, glancing behind herself to see two women leave the cell and the door close behind them. She sighed before putting her mind towards getting dressed.

The young knight knelt bowed before his lord, glancing up at him and the woman who stood beside him.
“My lord, according to the troops on the wall, there are signs of several riders heading towards the city gates. We believe them to be white healers.”
His lord nodded in response, “So they have arrived.”
“Indeed my lord, we shall be opening the gates once the first of the white healers is in reach.”
His lord’s face seemed to contort strangely for a brief moment before he spoke again.
“Bar them.”
“I am Sorry my lord?”
“Bar the gates, the city is lost. Should they attempt to enter then use whatever force you can to make sure that they perish.” he snarled

“But my lord Storm...” The knight began before being cut off

“Silence! He is your lord is he not? He commands you to bar the gates and you will do so.” sneered the woman beside his lord.
He looked at her, she was defiantly beautiful, but there was a sense of danger beneath those darkly hooded eyes. Despite his experience and training, he felt like a rodent before an eagle, or possibly a fox, frozen before an inevitable end. He suddely felt his breath again before responding.
“Yes my lord, I am sorry, I will direct the troops as you have requested.”
“Make it so Alveris, I do not have time for disobedient soldiers.” Sneered Marius Storm
Alveris nodded in acceptance, before rising and leaving the audience chamber. The sense of wrongness would not leave him as he marched purposefully away. It was almost as if his lord was a different person. And that woman, he had never seen her before the day previous, yet now she stood as if she was the lady of the city. He shook his head to clear it before pressing onwards to inform the officers of what the lord had just ordered...

Lady Shide smiled as the knight left the room, she sent a pulse through the web of red thread that laced down her arm and into the man who was but a puppet beside her.

He glanced at the assembled guards before issuing a command, “You are dismissed, I wish to speak with her ladyship in peace.”
As the last of the annoyances left the room, she slowly released her control over her captive.
“Now that was not so hard now? was it?”
Lord Storm struggled to pull his face away from her as she aggressively straddled his legs, pinning him into his throne.
“You have doomed us all.”
“Oh I think not.” she pouted, “The plague will ravage the city yes, but the people will rise again, I have my people here you see, so those that we choose to be blessed will be transformed into more suitable forms.”
“The white healers will be here within the day” Marius snarled fighting against her control, “A crisis of this size will bring the Hekatine if you continue.”
Shide leant back, apparently in shock “The Hekatine?” she asked, placing a thoughtful finger to the edge of her mouth before breaking out into a vicious grin, “The Hekatine are weak in number, as are the white healers. You think I just walked up to you yesterday, a lady from another city, knowing that you have been in power for so long yet have no heir. But that is not entirely true, you had an heir once, several if I remember correctly, and then they all mysteriously died. What a shame. Almost as if someone planned something.”
Lord Storm’s eyes widened in fear at the words he was hearing.
“I have been at this game a long time my lord, too long to remember. You are not the first one that I have chosen and you will not be the last. This city will fall and it will be all. your. fault. or at least that is what the survivors will think, not that there will be any.”

She carefully brought a hand up and gently stroked the lord’s face before opening his shirt to reveal a neat set of puncture wounds.
“I am getting thirsty now,” she remarked with distain towards the human beneath her, before leaning forwards to his shoulder and biting in hard to allow the flow of blood to enter her mouth.

Stalamus looked onwards towards the walls of the city or Rhaeadr, the journey had been long with the paths along the soul way, yet he had finally arrived, yet he was not the only one. His apprentice Charlotte rode in his shadow, whilst beside him was the young messenger that had reached him the day before. As the sun began to set, he could see the others congregating along the paths alongside him. Ahead he knew that there would be a grim task to undertake, an urgent one too. The city would fall in days if the plague was as advanced as he felt is could be. He sighed heavily as they reached within reach of the city.
“Should not be too difficult a task once we are underway,” he commented, turning back towards Charlotte, “You might never know, you could end up with an apprentice yourse..” He did not manage to finish his words as an arrow pierced his neck, throwing him off his horse.

The ride had been long as it had been hard. Dawn had barely broken when Lucia and her apprentices arrived to Rhaeadr in the rear-guard of the amassed white healers. She looked onwards, shocked to see a large campsite beyond the reach of the city gates.
“Mistress?” the voice of one of the girls drifted behind Lucia, but she could hardly hear her as she dismounted from her horse, shifting the reigns in her hands. As she moved closer and through the campsite, the initial silence was briefly broken by sudden sharp yells of pain. She breathed slowly, shocked by what she saw before her. The area beyond where the healers had settled was littered with several volleys of arrows, along with a corpse or two from an unfortunate horse that had been caught in the assault. All she could breathe were two words as she reached the edge of the killing field.
“What happened here?”