Propensity

Fate must be the attempt for ultimate freedom in sound mind, solemn body and established means. A less intrusive governing limited to protection from coercion and violence, when embracing individual responsibility opposes limited conditions or petty differences to propose private charity of established wealth in toleration of diverse lifestyles, including equally equitable industrialists and defenders of the unanimous civil liberties of the entirety of society. A belief in government action to achieve equal opportunity and equality for all is the duty of every leader between all aspects, from on high to the masses of the lower orders. To alleviate social ills and protect liberty in and of individual and human rights, whereas the role of the government shall be to guarantee order to chaos in plenty to needy, with constituency over boundless justice, for all to reprise the corrupt that are adept to apt government control. Common law is life where freedom is the luck of prosperity, where danger and opportune judgment combine there must be a formidable and impenetrable reckoning, checks and balances to eliminate suffering, eradicate and bring fear to surviving criminals, and breathe life into the eternal.

Achievement of dominion will create a new order, but a minority in no way signifies an imbalance, each life is in the balance of the wings of angels and demons, solidarity leads to misdirection, let your course be straight and true and truly be yours, intellectually informed without laden burden. Special messengers with extraordinary insight, powers to see and receive eternal truths, and the ability to communicate complex concepts in ways acceptable to the masses, use this opportunity for personal responsibility, limited empire, free markets inbound of law, values and morals within the construct of time to provide the freedom necessary to pursue victory. Empowerment of the individual is the last defense. Embrace freedom of choice in personal matters and logic eccentric, there is no fate but what we make but be considerate of the effects of your affects, significant government economics can exacerbate volatility and aggravate hysteria, hear the truth and take control. Subterfuge hides in agency and may advocate illegitimate expression to favor whimsicality in place of certainty, prove the environmental expression, promote equality of opportunity with favor and tolerate diverse lifestyles that reward success, failure is not an option.

Espousing a debate regarding government control of the economy and personal behavior depends of condition. Depending on the issue, government intervention supports individual freedom of choice, but pride in attention tend to oppose all arguments in extreme and emphasizes hypocrisy as an awry practical problem. Such issues of every choice is not plausible, all of not your concern or none left to compete, forever definite is the woman’s choice, a stream of indifference to the life less ordinary but tribulation begins at the breath of life and often sooner with rearing. The means of destruction of the high success candidates by those in uncertainty is of their own accord and protected, but not provided. Let the halls of the dead be monolithic and immense, and filled with echoes immaculate, will it come without perdition wherefore who will tarry for the coming of age, amnesty at conception or murder at conviction, wherein no child shall have illegitimate guardian. Or perhaps you wish to judge with prejudice, deprivation has limited potential inherent of accord, but rationing is wise of all that need not waste or create gluttons, but in foremost theory devoted sincerity, communication, and trust provides ample delegation were one to be racist and not xenophobic, exonerated aptitudes would rule at best their understanding. Using merit and assumed ability for admittance is what has brought society to this very moment, a natural selection has no assertion but factors solution and outcome, but pandering teaches nothing but incompetent practice and redundant rhetoric that has lost efficiency in the doldrum, compensation by means of alteration only isolates the radiant failure and compounds the leaderless and self-enlisted. No less than divine to favor sustainability by using the capabilities of democracy, frequently provincial our behaviors reflect our values, endorsing values in defense of structure thrives only in a society that affords them.

Warned and hopeful you still want imperialists and thunder, certainty and category without economics or individuality without freedom, finding impractical options of a distasteful rogue state that plots conspiracies with threatening tranquility reprise of enemies and questioning the royal command and granted civil liberties. The time to survive vows against the lifeless illusion, though it may be each vigilante hiding in the fog of sacred knowledge, the appropriate punishment is equal in its own reward, but never granted for retribution, fitting of the crime shall be no inquiry of concise levels of severity. Exceedingly clear should be the brimming profundity of boundless wickedness, vanity will not tread in darkness nor shall the law, neither can be remitted to subliminal definition.

Sight is sold and truths are told, without either is monopoly. The official quorum protects the customers, but this government must be of the people, the knowledge must be intricate and consummate. Private sectors of government tax the public, it is therefore their interest to see befit, but an adequate voice is required to regulate interests, competitive private enterprises create opportunity, but those who understand those conditions must set these standards. Productivity is growth where boundless capital exceeds the norms compelling the standards of life where there is only freedom, and taxes reciprocate in excess with endless possibilities and not a damaged imposition. Patience is a virtue and all good things come to those who wait. If unintelligent and unintelligible, zounds, find a book.

Then one day I became lost and wandering into the darkness that is totalitarianism, I realized nothing ever again and buried myself into the ground as a plant. Do not believe the communist lies of despots and fascists, globally we are unique and as I have heard ‘rebellion is the bastard of conformity’, it is a certain ambiguous fallacy with generalizations of diagnosis, aside from the belief systems of communists falling short as of time immemorial. Motivation and initiative to achieve personal accomplishment by studying, saving and succeeding, is what humanity deserves and freedom unites, no matter of the disposition the belief system will be the only common attribute of society. Communists share a brain with the others of their species in order to survive, an interdependency known as the welfare state, in exploit even in times of desperation. If the contradiction were not in capitalism, it is surely in education, with a strong dream and vigilant perseverance public schools could be a prized element in solidarity, yet standards in place of rewards and defiance in place of participation has clouded the people, neglect of participants has led to ambivalence of outcome, salvation, survival. Condemn all that do not improve performance in as much diversity as desires, competition is not to the benefit of the establishment, only its patrons, where we exceed expectations will be the admired refuge for those wishing to burden escape, by means of knowledge.

Blind thoughts of meticulous science, measuring the contrasts of pain and suffering could even scour among the risks for danger and opportunity, comprehensive for the youth and complicit for the wise. Cell research crosses moral lines into quandary in best regards, for it is illegal to administer anything that causes fatality in the name of science unless delivered to oneself. In cellular research, despite the cell’s potential existence is a donation by law, separate from body of origin to be of great importance. If the donation of life were objectionable, there would not be reproduction, and if the destruction of life taken were in error, vegetarians would be we all. Embryonic stem cell research does not lead to cultist consumption or zombie addiction, nor is sacrilegious in namesake, the ethics however implicitly deserving of debate do not negate the necessity. Funding is a matter of discussion, but in preliminary efforts should not receive open funding to avoid conflicting interests. Forsaking none, the potential to comprehend the healing ability has been within, its graces given by any or all are yet discovered, and when revealed may heretofore rid the wants and needs of every.

Where there is fire there is smoke, but more assuredly, there is fuel. Endless presumptuously not, exclusive perhaps, but common again nay, other sources must be explored, a plan of action is ever so required so that proactive account is made and discovery is part of the agenda, at very least our worries should be to undermine the market with another option, and not create deplorable inaction. Not diamonds from coal or blood from oil, we find them all beneath the soil, but on this wretched mortal coil, we tarry every day and toil, so why should there not be unlimited power sources created of wind and solar energy until the energy created is more than it takes to create additional power harnessing units. Anything and everything is of petroleum, from plastic to pharmaceuticals, and we simply burn it. There is a fear of those with firearms, a mindset that cannot allow what it needs to control and suspects a lack thereof, by those who have not the composure they demand of others and so they must not make rules by conjecture or schools of thought. Of course, militia may defend the empire, but as with anything so may those who would one day take their places in the busy fields of war and mercy, furnished with many a skill of family based origin, to complete the understanding of what they defend and infer what government overlooks in cases of hypocrisy. Anger is a power and can be lost easily, a weapon is violent but is made with a purpose, fear the mind of hatred that blights the eyes of others with no less than consternation.

A criminal looks like everyone else, expect no less apprehension by the other countries or unions than deserved in turn, latter innocence does not exist. The soul that cannot close the void of evil in their originations is incapable of such at settlement, in fact, it is invasion and colonization, an imperial distrust that aspires to impose rather than become a new nation and tell its elders to forget the nationalist malaise, and make babies not bombs with better genetic identity. Support the legal registered entrance of visitors, a visa perhaps at the very least, without amnesty on leave, there is no better than this democracy and it cannot sustain the traditions of the less than human cannibalism and sacrifices. There must never be remediated laws for illegal immigrants, crossing a border without patent is the crime, save the lives of the slaves. Eminent domain is the glory of eminence and the question of a public end, a martial state will only awaken the best of revolutionaries, or so much has in history’s endless doctrine, despite the lack of origin. Respect ownership and the rights of private property, seizure with compensation is more than adequate, depravity will be paid the due consequence, the hand of the law cannot sweep aside a private citizen and owned property at the pomp and circumstance of wealthy developers, no more than lost is peace of mind. Guests upon the planet are all, plant more trees than there are seas and give to the desert what it has provided, and in its full grow over the sacred land. Where the lower orders are many, the voice of reason is high above, in absence there is silence in the garden or the grave.

Merlin 2 - 8 The Vulcan Temple

Merlin 2 - 8 The Vulcan Temple
MJ Banks

For as now the fates muse upon this tale, to graces be upon it another immortal, the first and ward eldest Nick with cavil and calumny and his stalking counterpart the lured and lowering spy as intrigued as Nickolas can possibly and with a boundless fascination. This second immortal now above Nickolas, Ana and the mercenary David, hides in the rooftops and catwalks, not yet to have slipped the boundaries of this one of many capital cities as a wretched insipid foe. As they sit scheming around a map, surely plotting their next mendacity he is sure, he watches with drifting eyes beyond their conscious sight and dissonant forlorn paradigm. A tepid minutia in the city, the people with an unspoken fear brimming with laconic terror, they knew innocently how to be mercenaries, how the blood of the fields in august burns red, but not how to deal with an insurgency. Without the rune lord seer forsooth to foresee the doom for the city, the movers gave what they could, to further the fund of a hunt for the demon, and the carping shakers standing in the street ask for more of funding unable to do more than cast aspersions.

They sit at an outdoor tavern looking over a map, not a private setting but quiet as scared eyes pass and heavy eyes drink amongst them. The bartender walks elsewhere toward two garrulous drunkards at the counter, but as they beg the bartender, he will not pour a drink until they first pay. Young and drunk men binging on the spoils of a good harvest and immaculate yield tout to shout their tales, making no haste for epithets of poor taste and striking a cord to sing anew a humble chanson chaste discursive. A bandbox pub with a whole fourth wall missing, counter on the left, chairs inside and out, not many tables for all the few customers, one establishment of more the like for many. Allotting a plan and plotting allay for the city they scour, the map for what may be their best attempt to hasten the incarceration of the abomination, an abandoned road with the empty and echoing trails of banding barterer and bantering barkers with new and old chattel. Nickolas, Ana, and Devlin beseech their disparaging quandary an exhausted and forlorn retinue spitefully seeking to smite the conflagration.

Devlin: "We've tried here and here," he said pointing to the map, "Lass, what do you know about illicit materials?"
Wench: “What are you trying to find?”
Nickolas: “We hunt the agent cursing your city.”

The young woman pours a drink for they, and pores over the map to look inside of it, intently silent and filling each stein and all three each to the brim. Keeping her hand upon the handle and the lid of the pitcher, its lid twisted shut by she to close its spout, and in putting it to her side, she sets it on the table and points to the map.

Wench: “There is an alchemist, there, near the Vulcan temple.”

Devlin takes keen to fright, he pours his drink down his gullet and drops it to the table ever insatiable and renowned as so, the dark maiden pours another drink for him and reckons her parable.

Wench: “He has many things he shouldn't, you can't miss it they dress completely in red and paint their skin red to dance like fire in the virile nights.”

Two official sentries stalk the lane, approaching the pub in the wall.

Wench: “I told you nothing...greetings sentry, a drink for your thirsts perhaps?”

The sentry men jovially accept in splendor with looks concernedly pleased and vessels of violence gaining stamina in voluptuary momentum. The drunkards continue their fated fete in ode disrupting the mere patience of the forever more immortal waiting in the lofts and crofts and rooftops, and he turns away just as briefly as the shadow of the great Phoenix, a heartfelt airless shade of sunlight that consumes his fascination. High above the great wingspan and a majestic winged creature that lighter than air soars as bright as the sun in its coveted tufted crest. By the time that the shadow passes, the investigators he shadows have already gone toward the temple, and as the fates restore the assassin’s creed from the lofted capture of the muses allowing the spy to reveal himself and return his attention to the search of vindication. They were gone and he missed them, so he adjusted position, difficult as it were any insidious reproach or dastardly obstacle would not lengthen pursuit, not on a day of days, a unique immaculate reproof soon made on new perch with furtive disposition.

A temple white with granite corrugated pillars, perhaps a mausoleum of monolithic measure, many torches alight and in sequential rows each ablaze a flickering candle performance surrounding the edge of walk and wall, a service to the dark and its painted dancers in an operatic fire sermon intended to haze a brazen storm if forthwith they knew its coming censure. Silk swaying savory cloths, free of pattern and deepest red sway in doorway and foyer, and draping across the empty towering walls to keep them clean. Banner gleam for every perchance-passing patron, even in the streets the young dressed in red robes and sparse clothes of every red in its spectrum dance, dream as they lie about, lollygag about the sacred tales that once in elocution to woo the fairer species, and repeated to sound imperfectly pertinent. Each cultist agog aground painted with golden emblems on their faces enjoying the courtesan fete to delight, as of late, dancing like fairies around a statuesque representation of their Lord Vulcan holding both in hands the fires of the gods fueled by wells of white oils filling the marble statue. The interior a more prudent order with members each a sacred warder of the holy ways of fire and immaculate incarnation. Heavy and laden robes in deep thick hoods, walking with their hands in the opposite sleeve, pacing and reading, making candles and braiding wicks or writing in essence the druidism of their priesthood, the worship of fire and the alluring hypnosis therein, keeping the aisles of their sacred temple in sacramental order.

Side by side, the detectives stroll through the decadence as they spot the dolt monks and move to ask them of the rumored alchemist as the dancing girls, with heather flowers in their amber hair, wave wands with banded tassel tail. Many chosen, in solitude walking of differing ages, worshipers of holy flame need not inquiry, for their notice of three mercenaries or outlandish hunters in fallow colors of land and not blood easily noticed as foreign seekers in auspice of the alchemist among the elegant ceremonious courtship. By a simple gesture, the first of the dolorous monks approached soon pulls a hand from the sleeve of the opposite arm and points down a dark foreboding alley.

In morrow awaits a dark timber door lurks dark and dreamless in the haunt of the storehouse, a shadowed port in an old city wall that nearly fears the three, large and closed to the outside world. In the pore, two disparaged and drunken youths scuffle through the narrow stricture.

A rejuvenate group with the smell of wine and an unrequited young fellow with stammering stride and their arms over the shoulders of each other despite the narrow pass one tugs on their line and breaks from their formation.

Knave: “…While you’re…waiting outside the back door love?”
Ana: “Your pestilence causes earthquakes."

Stares Ana into the mind of the boy, outside the purview of the common law, with an enticing stir a lustful entrancing fire brews within her eyes and frightens her fascinate.

Devlin: “And you are in splendor charlatan.”

The broad and large Devlin though armed slaps the obstinate and oblivious drunk upside his head and shoves him by his accolade sending him shuffling and scurrying to follow his kinfolk. The sound of the alms of the calms, there is time but for remnants now, they surround an alchemist's shop, the immortal spy lurks deep within the midst.

Nickolas: “I'll go in and ask; you watch after the exits a few moments, Ana will watch the door.”
Devlin: “Why can’t she watch the gutters?”
Nickolas: “She's less suspicious wandering the streets and you're less concern in the alley, less people who know you to stop and distract you. Ana will leave you in the alley, come in the front door, and pass through and leave through the back door to meet you again and walk to the front door."

Devlin: “Why?”
Ana: “Anyone who is conspicuous will run passed me or back into the shop and rush out of the back door where you'll be to stop them. And besides, i can’t get in conflict with someone in an alchemists shop or its stock in the alley."

Devlin: “Why the hell is that?”
Ana raises her palm to his face with a red right hand as she twiddles her fingers. Nickolas intervenes and slaps Devlin across the arm.
Nickolas: “Immaculate incineration, come now, time is of the essence.”

Down the stones laid for path and filled with dust and ash, the door creaks slightly open and swings aloft blowing the red curtains out of the window to let them gently rest in again. The unknown immortal watches beyond as thereafter Devlin enters and passes slowly through the poorly lit area to the brightly spacious foyer and out the front door, once outside he squanders his attention to one of his comrades, starting a conversation keeping one eye ever so to the door. From door to door a myriad of multiple magic wares and other fares to stock the average secluded shop, in the rear near the alley blocks of black wax, remains of spent candles that had never corrupt stacked like boxes, on the walls candles of every shape, color, size and sort. Upon dozens of shelves, bags of seed and severed grain feed and boxes lined with burlap and filled with powders for patrons to heed, in fine granulated compilation categorized, but beyond still clever reach the choice items for the experiences and authorities whose voices were better known and whose coin had yet still a better weight.

Nickolas began his time as customer, looking through pannier and lot, whoever sought of tarried arts in benefice to a proper alchemist or newcomer to ask the owner. A stolid fellow, well into his years with the character of an architect or engineer, long and strong but grey with faded glory. A glazed vacant approach to apotheosis, launched well into sleeping awake or dead at the stake where goods or alchemy are best and dearly bought through tenement dwellers with proper erudite patents at a counter surrounding the prized contents of the shop near the door which Nickolas had entered and overlooked his onlooker. A useless glare and lesson learned, unashamed but suspicious he looks away and continues his motion to seem inconspicuous, passing his hands through powders ignorant of their names and claims, appraising the stoutly musk smells of each as the shopkeeper shows signs of life merely, reading a book in erudite behavior.

The Vulcan priests and alchemist apothecaries that travel to the neighboring tribes enter, as does the nether foe in the darkness of the alchemist's shop, the manslayer rich with opprobrium and vitriol, seething shadow beneath the shade. Enemy of the light and disintegrate obscurities the tyrant of slaughter is seen by none. The newly arrived regulars drop a bag the size of a rucksack full of brimstone to the counter, and in turn, the master of alchemy slaps his book over a small and segregated piece of it turning it to powder. He scrapes it to a small saucer lifted from a scale and pours it slowly to his clear glass of blueberry wine, the water turns from blue to green and he adds the saucer to the scale and begins counting cheap coins that balance against the remainder of their bounty. Nickolas continues looking through folderol useless trinkets in aspersion and muted hilarity due by the probability that, an alchemist can more often than not forge his own coins.

A malady unbeknownst, the viper demon stirs in the murk ubiquitous as lies, passing beneath the light and behind the shadow the same as in other acquisitions of his dark materials, distance aware. An immortal, in search for the bomber with an entangled revenge finds Nickolas in a nearly hidden shop of volatility, the venomous agent entered and not seen within its confines seeks supplies for penultimate destruction. In dark reflections, it will be soon he finds fit to fulminate a final wrath upon the city for it mentions the fallacy of purity in the supplies of the room, and shortly thereafter an explosion of intense meaning and mention, as if two stars were in mend a blast sieges and surmounts every perishable. As life swallows the lives that race against the sun, the walls begin ripping and the lands slide followed by a great quaking of the earth, fiery torches blast through windows like furnaces while the sly murder gives a smile of pain in elusion. A most course thus of dissension unfound, the cunning bomber sees the two stand, but turns and rushes to the castle, the bane poison of dissention.

Outside at quick wit Devlin escapes emulsion by entrapment of contraption, a shielding wall from which the fire cast it across the street. Ana luckily, swoons by the torrential pyre of fire like a kite attached to a wick, with every step engraving memory by those who watch but simply gliding with agility to balcony thereby, drifting like a ghost of the sun. The fires rage to alarm a circling phoenix page for the nomadic lord Merlin, but the good wizard sees a city structure throe. In as much terror there is so surely many ghosts, Ana like an ember standing in a tray of incense and now two immortals, quantifying the carnage of the site that with a single fuse of dark magic and hellish fury has brought the search for justice to a new close. For each immortal, the ally Nickolas and the yet unnamed counterpart staring both theoretically and practically, each believes that the other is the perdition responsible for the vituperation, pigeonholed in battle seek the death of the other, infecting the logic that this may be a long way to attrition.

Merlin 2 - 7 Dark Agents

Merlin 2 - 7 Dark Agents

Every eternal in strife, where the gods emerge from clouds, the adept immortal accepts fate as a perilous just that must become the hunter of the poison rains. Life ceases and enters the lustrous darkness and creates the infinity that is chaos, screaming that appends to time and overshadows the silence until even the light in the mind vanishes, there the Termagant waits for invocation. In the silent dark the only voice burns the vision of the mind, a legend to the beholder with a heart of virulence, the plan to revoke hate will partake, infested with pain the betrayal will occur and the dark agent will be the sword of evil. With a great audience, echoes become the demonic reality as impostor perils the waking moment, lurking in the shadow absconding darkness with death to dole. The dark agent of reprise with ancient lust, clutching simple carnage staring at a tavern, simple discontent seething from the hellish ether beneath him aching to repatriate desperation and looking for no particular victim tonight.

The Termagant seeks trouble in ample supply, waiting, watching in silent nightmare, he breaks his poring vision into the distance and collects pieces of shadows, putting them into the parcel satchel he carries. With the desire to remember, frantic shaking hands trying to remember or forget annihilation, standing when noticing the lack of control. Stoic stance and walking grace, solid drive and determination in even paces, in even traces in the pit of the moonless summer night, with bag in hand it drops the satchel creation at the back wall of a public house, alongside the doghouse and other loose useless timber. As the locals spend their loose coins on barrels of rotgut or vineyard wines, they sing and sound the tides of their daily wary toils in the soil. They dance upon ground and in moments without a warning sound, as the dark agent leaves sighing with solace resound, the delivery expounds its purpose, an explosion of fierce intensity and brief duration of hell’s fires to the surface, the evening rests as a blast at a garrulous tavern.

The horror of a tempestuous explosion ends with a rising ball of fire, rubble and rough terrain is what the weeping eyes searching through the demised remain find in the dark blue early morn. The morning view of dastard carnage, tiny streams of blood, bone and sinew, and wrath, Merlin stands watch as Ana tries to console the sorrows and dejection equally Nickolas and Troy sift through the scattered ashes and broken and currently smoldering hatch roof. In the blast, the garret where the casks and kegs were, had fallen on a great many a few, but beneath the debris, a survivor struggles to escape. The wrath is whole and complete, not a simple hole in the wall but a scene of aftermath, where a building once stood. The remnants in darkness begin to shake and scatter as gravel rolls down the remaining structure and a body begins to surface.

Nickolas finds the struggling limbs of a sole survivor and proximately sounds to the others in group, “We’ve got a live one here,” he touts as per continue, to pull the lucky victim into the clear of the calm. Troy hastily rushes just before helping him drag the would be decedent, and the survivor crawls into the clear as the last of the stone thrown, covered in dust and caked blood, able to stand in surly will. Troy stands infatuated in slighting disbelief, not only is the man standing accordant, without leaning or yearning to seek a healer, but of sound volition standing above and painted skin beneath the blood of heroes without a single scar. The survivor still coughing though, lungs full of ash, gravel and or turf, he dusts his clothes and shakes the dirt from his dark hair, in contrast complete and utter opposite juxtapose, nearly sharing the same breath, clean to dirty from blonde to black between light to dark.

“What happened, what do you remember?” Troy asked in a quiet and consoling tone. Still dusting himself the survivor coughs once more and speaks with watery eyes and a pallid tone of disbelief.

“I was having too much to drink as I do, and then smoke and fire,” the stranger spoke.

Though the young magic squire Troy stands close with intent, Nickolas looms closer. In opposite quiet as dusk, staring at a man dressed shade to shade the opposite as he, and no sign of injury from a collapsed building razed. The survivor turns to the abruptly close Nickolas and speaks again shortly after noticing Merlin approach from the distance. “It all happened so quickly, first I was standing there and then,” without hesitation, he strikes Nickolas in the throat with the clasp of his hand and punches Troy with the other, and starkly absconds with any further information chased by others into the maze that is the city Utopia.

Merlin stood watch as the young man escapes, in confusion to reckon in pondering luck, he drew a lit smoking pipe from his sleeve, readily alit and cupped in his hand, stoking the fire and drawing the smoldered contents into his stern mouth as his allies rise. Meanwhile the hellish embers beneath Ana’s fingernails began to cool, whichever manifest spell of fire she wished to summon and divulge, had not the opportunity for the swiftly elusive and confrontational unfamiliar person.

Troy holds his nose, “What the blast was that?”
Merlin answered from the distance, “Just that, I suppose.”
“Will you live?” Nickolas asked in a rakish coarse voice of an ailing Troy.
Troy: “Yes, I’ll be well, I imagine…”

Ana approaches for emotional support and besting a witty comment with sarcastic interring inference.
Ana: “My boys always getting in trouble, what did you say to him?”
She asks and waits with her arms crossed in half stance.
Nickolas: “I know what I’ll say when I find him...”

Ana approaches Nickolas, dusts his sleeves and attentively straightens his jib. Merlin ceaselessly approaches them, as Ana helps then with care to Troy’s cracked broken nose, discovering sensitive pride and reluctant preservation. The wizard Merlin stands taller than the day before, with echoing eyes befit a rejuvenated physique free of fray, he looks carefully over everything, not turning his head until he has soaked the scenery and looks once anent to the sky. He looks down again as Nickolas steps to his side.

Merlin: “Did you recognize him?”
Nickolas: “No, should I’ve?”
Merlin: “I thought maybe a name would help us track him; He’s in your family.”
Ana: “What do you mean, ‘family’?

From a distance, they check for wear and worse, she mends the nose of Troy to his begrudging frustration, a maternal touch and a loudly sound of brush underfoot in healing seams of a broken nose with a mending spell, and then a patient grace. A rewarding appreciation the pain magically abolishes as she whips her hand away from his face and gives a simple dusting of her hands where the dried blood of his wound easily brushes to the ground. Nickolas suffers sever frustration, a simple menacing consternation of whimsical confusion he cannot tame nor consume asunder.

Nickolas: “He survived the havoc here…but he looked nothing like me.”
Ana: “He looked like you in opposite reverse.”
Troy: “Like a dark mirror.”

Nickolas looked to Merlin, hoping that it is his time to speak a revealing decisive moment, but there is none. They watch as the sorrowed bring out the dead from the debris of the destroyed pub, a collective memory of the reckless terror none yet incarcerated.

Ana: “Would you remember him, if seen again?”
Troy: “I sure will.”
Nickolas: “Assuredly, I owe him best.”
Merlin: “Good, we may just need his help yet.”

The audible melancholy of the saddened families of victims caterwauling their loses, as flammable libations spill out of a leaking cask and begin a new fire, Ana rushes to the fires and with the tips of her fingers of an outreached hand the flames behest into a quell. The recovery continues for a city in woe, with aloof lumbering and sickeningly morose with yet another destructive malaise to mar the citizen’s spirits as the burdened tend to their wounded and dead.