The door flew open following the sound of gunshots…
Tobias was thrust back in time, the same sounds, in this same building, that he heard as a child. He had flashes of his mother spiriting him to safety… Syndicalists fighting their way through the royal palace, the sounds of gunfire in these very halls…
He shook his head, jaw clenched, hand clenched as he held the gun up. He would be ready. He had to be… but the person who came through those doors wasn’t what he expected. It was a woman. A woman he knew.
“Solfrid?”
Solfrid was pushed forward by Ten Rings militants, tears running down her cheeks.
“Put the gun down or the bitch dies!” one of the militants shouted as Tobias pressed his finger against the trigger. He didn’t say anything, but Solfrid looked so scared, tears running down her cheeks, through bloodshot blue eyes.
“Please… they’ll kill me…” she sobbed as Tobias’ adrenaline peaked. He grit his teeth, holding the gun up, finger on the trigger.
“Put the gun down, King Tobias, and only your blood needs yet be spilt.”
The Ten Rings militants who had entered the office fanned out, as the Satrap made his way to Solfrid, taking her in one arm and pressing a pistol to her head.
“Or you can test me, and she’ll die too.”
“What do you want?” Tobias growled.
“I want you to die, Your Majesty,” the Satrap replied calmly.
“But the question is does Solfrid die too?”
Tobias gulped. He glanced to his side. He could see the military encampment outside of the palace through the windows. He may be able to stall for time…
“I trusted you not to kill the Iraelian ambassador if I called. I did. You killed him anyway. Why should I trust that you won’t kill her?”
Solfrid was weeping.
“Pleassseee….” she whimpered.
“Because I didn’t have you right before me when I killed the Iraelian. But I do now. Why go chasing hares when there’s a stag within my grasp? You will die tonight, King Tobias. Does Solfrid die too?”
Tobias felt his heart pounding in his chest. His hand shook just a bit, and he slowly lowered the pistol. When he set it down on the desk the Satrap pushed Solfrid into him. He caught her and held her gently.
“Are you alright?”
She looked up, her terrified, tear stained face, looking a bit relieved. It brought a meek smile to Tobias’ face until he saw her lips curl into a wicked smile. And she delivered a smack across his cheek as two Ten Rings militants grabbed Tobias by the shoulders and pushed him into his desk chair.
“Solfird!?”
“Shut up,” she sneered.
“And listen to teacher.”
“We have eyes on the mole,” one of the snipers set up overlooking the King’s office reported. Stig grabbed a pair of binoculars.
“Someone get Max Hveiti over here!” he barked before getting back on the radio.
“Hummel?”
“There must be some way outta here,” Laurids muttered, clutching his rifle as he peaked around the corner. He didn’t see anyone.
“Limited resources, you concentrate on where you’re needed… hopefully that means I’ll have the run of the place…”
“Hummel!”
Laurids took his walkietalkie.
“Field Marshal?”
“What’s your status?”
“I’m making my way to the control centre. This place is dead. I don’t see anyone…”
“We have eyes on the King. It seems most of the Ten Rings militants are there with him.”
“He’s alive?”
“For now. But we can’t even attempt to save him unless you can restore power to the system that will let us shatter that bulletproof glass.”
“If this group was serious about maximizing resources, they have men up there with the King, and people guarding that centre. So I’m going radio silent until I get in.”
“And if you don’t?”
“If the King dies before you hear from me, then it doesn’t matter. Hummel out.”
Laurids wiped the sweat from his forehead. He'd grown up in Darrow and the Khastenian ex-pats there had a saying. One he'd always found funny… but well… it was all he could think of right now.
“Yippee ki yay,” he muttered to himself before heading off.
Stig breathed deep, clutching the radio tightly lest he start punching things. Or people.
“Do you know who that woman is, Hveiti?”
“Solfrid Aadland” Max replied.
“Who is she?”
“She’s from Hjallerup…” Max replied.
“Her family was killed in the early Syndicalist purges, she grew up in a Syndicalist ‘re-education’ centre until the town was liberated.”
“Could she be acting on Syndicalist sympathies? Maybe the indoctrination worked.”
“We screened all Absalonhöll employees for this sort of thing,” Max replied.
“She had barely contained anger at the Syndicalists. Nothing indicating an allegiance to them.”
“Well your screens missed something,” Stig grunted before turning back to the snipers.
“They’re going to make it difficult, Sir,” one of the snipers replied. Stig walked over. The Ten Rings militants had begun to crown around Tobias and the Strap.
“Of course they will,” Stig said, sighing.
“Solfrid!”
“God, going by that name all of these years…” Solfrid grunted.
“It’s alright dear,” the Satrap said.
“All for a good cause. In a few moments, the vindication will be yours.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tobias replied.
“I have no idea who you…”
“SHUT UP!” Solfrid screamed as she pressed her hands against the desk, leaning forward to glare at him.
“I put up with all of this, and I can’t wait…”
Tobias didn’t have to ask her what she meant. He just didn’t know why.
“Solfrid… by gods, she watched over Hanna and Hael and Baldr…” Alycia went white.
“She’s involved with them somehow, but we don’t know how,” Stig replied.
“She seems genuinely angry with your husband though.”
“I have no idea why,” Alcyia replied.
“Do you know anything about her?”
Alycia walked over to where the snipers were encamped and looked through a pair of binoculars. She scowled seeing this woman berate her husband, at the mercy of these terrorists.
“She was always… nice. Helpful. She knew how to manage her department, and always offered to do more,” Alycia replied.
“I know she’s from Hjallerup. She didn’t talk about it much, but that was understandable. Syndicalists killed her sister and all.”
“What?” Stig and Alycia turned to Max, who hadn’t looked up from his laptop, the fluorescent glow of the screen reflected in his glasses.
“Your Grace,” Max added, “you said she had a sister?”
“I did.”
“According to her files… she doesn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
Max waved Stig and Alycia over, and motioned to his screen. Solfrid’s personnel file was pulled up.
“She’s an only child. We have her birth certificate on record, and her parents never had another kid.”
“I know for a fact she said her sister was raped and murdered by Syndicalists,” Alycia said, her voice tinged with confusion, as she looked over Max’s shoulder at the screen.
“Unless…” Max began to type away. His fingers clicked on the keyboard furiously.
“The King could die at any moment,” Stig said, his voice holding back a sort of frantic panic.
“I… we… didn't keep him safe all of those years for this trash…”
“Rape. Murder. Hjallerup,” Max muttered.
“It’s enough to make someone see red. And I think I know who she really is.”
“Mare d'Rabuta has brought me… us… back to this place, Your Majesty,” the Satrap said as Solfrid took to his side.
“Surely you can appreciate the poetry of the moment.”
“
I like poetry,” Tobias replied, coldly. He felt paralyzed. He was certain he'd die. It was likely. At the very least, though, he could try to die on his own terms. God… Baldr and Hael and Hanna… they'd lose him younger than he lost his own parents. He felt himself choke up, and through his trembling lips he spit out pure, bitter poison.
“I think I’m just missing the artistic vision here.”
The Satrap could sense that anger. And he smiled.
“Not long after you fled from these halls as a child, I came here to get this…” he removed one of the ten rings he wore around his fingers, the one from his right index finger, and placed it on the desk.
“The name of the ring is written in a language few can read anymore,” he explained, “but it says ‘reciprocity.’ It’s one of the unbreakable laws of the universe. That what happens must have a reaction. Mare d’Rabuta has brought us back here, together, and now I’m going to fix an imbalance over a thousand years in the making.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tobias muttered.
“But I need to believe that you killed all of those people over more than a ring.”
“I know you don’t,” the Satrap replied.
“Your inheritance was taken from you. Had you known… well… I don’t suppose it would have mattered. The coup we funded was supposed to wipe out your house, but you clung on like a weed.”
Tobias felt a sort of… barren anger… wash over him. He knew that the Syndicalists had foreign support and funding. Still, the arms dealer Krut Ventur Jr was supposed to be that source and he was dead, killed in a Skandan prison.
But… if the Ten Rings had this vendetta against him…
“Ventur was one of yours.”
“Yes Your Majesty,” the Satrap replied.
“I let the Syndicalist hounds off their leash. It was your uncle of course, and then Lieftur and Nielsen, who were so caught up in their own petty squabbles. Your uncle, desperate for validation. Anders’ ego was so large, but so fragile. And the Syndicalists… so caught up in their own self righteousness. It didn't take much to get them to do what they did. All they needed was the means. And we provided them. Guns, at very affordable prices.”
Tobias could smell it.
The smell of burning bodies. He could never forget it. No one who had smelt it could ever forget it. His well meaning Santonian relatives, the Scalvians, his Gojan family… even his Malorian in-laws… none of them knew. He knew though.
God, that smell. His countrymen knew. They all knew. The burning bodies. Mass graves. Syndicalist labour camps. Emaciated children and inmates…
None of this ever left him. Years hadn't dulled any of it. Merely given him the means to cope. He'd go months without revisiting the horrors of his childhood, of his country he saw firsthand as he grew up, but when they returned they were as vivid as ever. He was ten years old… and they'd come across a mass grave. Anti-Syndicalist partisans and the village that had sheltered them…
And this man… Tobias almost couldn't fathom it. Nielsen had done that. Lieftur had done that. Their functionaries, political officers, the scum who flocked to organized violence… they'd done that. He said nothing, because deep down… it was hard to feel much.
“Over one thousand years ago,” the Satrap continued, “your family shattered us in Aria. Viking explorers from afar aided the Arianese crown… and in so doing exiled us to the shadows. Our legacy extends beyond your sagas or the holy books of the Shaddaists or the Syrixian chronicles… the Stan Yera were still children when we ruled the world, Your Majesty. We were, we are, the last vestiges of that better world and when we tried to remake it, Finnleik Scylfing cut us down. Now you, his direct descendent, will die. Your house will finally know ruin, and our god Mare d'Rabuta will usher us to our new era. Your Association of Nations will die, your family will be wiped from this planet, and we… will ascend.”
“You can’t believe this,” Tobias said, turning to Solfrid.
“These people helped the Syndicalists seize power. I know… you told me… what they did to you and your family.”
“I know what the Syndicalists did to my family,” Solfrid replied coldly.
“And I know what you did to forgive them.”
“Allow me to introduce you, Your Majesty, to…”
“Halla Reiten,” Max said.
“That’s Solfrid,” Alycia replied.
“Younger, but that’s her.”
“Halla Reiten,” Max repeated, “is her real name. She was born and grew up in Hjallerup. Legally she died in 2013.”
“She faked her death,” Stig grunted.
“Já,” Max said with a nod.
“‘Solfrid Aadland’ was a girl around her age who did die in a Syndicalist prison camp. Halla took her name. Halla did it to hide her real identity. As the sister of Stina Reiten.”
“That name sounds familiar…” Alycia said as she tried to pull it from her memory, but Max was already on it.
“
It should. Your husband pardoned Stina’s rapist.”
“You were meant to die a quick death, a young death,” the Satrap mused.
“Cut down at seven, fear and pain evaporating into sweet nothingness. But you survived. Broken. Incomplete. Never the person you could have been, or privy to the sweet release my plans should have afforded you, Your Majesty.”
Tobias sank back in his chair as the Satrap pontificated, pacing before his desk in his office.
“But now you have a choice. Do you want an empty life? Or a meaningful death?”
“Now I have a choice?” Tobias asked coldly.
“No,” the Satrap chuckled.
“But it is a comfort you can take to the grave.”
“My children will survive this. My family continues on, in Saintonge. In Goyanes and Andrenne. You won't accomplish what you want to accomplish by killing me.”
“As we speak, though,” the Satrap explained, “a plane carrying an Ultramontese nuclear bomb is being transported to Saintes. The nuclear attack will not just cripple Saintonge and kill off your Meterran cousins, but the instability will plunge the region into a never ending war that the Ten Rings will profit off of as we grow in influence.”
Tobias suddenly… put it all together. The Strap’s warnings about democracy. His fixation on his family. The AN was Svane’s idea but he was there front and centre with the President of Scalvia when the project was announced.
And once Tobias realized it, he laughed. It was a short snicker. A sharp little chuckle that cut through the tension.
“Does the prospect of our reclaiming of Meterra amuse you?” the Satrap asked, for the first time
sounding confused.
“You’re nothing but an arms dealer,” Tobias replied with a dismissive smirk.
“This bullshit with my family, with your god, it’s all an excuse. Did you arm the Syndicalists because they wanted to kill my family, or because their cheques cleared?”
The Satrap looked on, looking a bit perturbed. Tobias wasn't done though.
“All of your talk… you ‘let the Syndicalists off the leash.’ Do you know how long I wanted to kill Thomas Nielsen? Fifteen years, that's how long. And you know what? He earned that hatred in me,” Tobias said as he stood up.
“Kill me! I’m already dead!” he barked, smirking again as the Satrap clearly didn't know what to make of him now.
“At least Thomas Nielsen and Jannik Lieftur believed in something,” Tobias shot back coldly.
“They weren't common gun runners who hid behind prophecies and some grudge no one’s been alive to care about for a thousand fokking ye…”
“I cared!” the Satrap growled back as he slammed a fist into the table. He was nearly hyperventilating. His eyes were wide in his deep set, older face, his body heaving from anger and adrenaline.
“We care,” he finally added, calmly, through laboured breath.
“My ancestors walked this world when the Lost Empire was new. You and your kin, and the rest of the squabbling morons of this word, are lesser men, barbarian stock too jumped up on your ignorance. But no more! Your ancestor stopped us once before, but you… you will die. And your Santonian family will die in nuclear hellfire.”
The Satrap’s voice has risen. Going from calm and methodical to angry. From a teacher to a rabid preacher fixated on sin.
“And as for your children, well… the political instability wrought by your assasination at the hands of a fellow Prydanian will throw this country into chaos once again. And this time there will be no rogue princes escaping.”
The Satrap took the pistol Tobias he reluctantly lowered and pushed it to Halla.
“If I or any of my men were to shoot you,” the Satrap added as he walked around Tobias, almost taunting the snipers opposite them, behind the bulletproof glass, “history will record it as a terrorist killing a King. But if one of the King’s own subjects kills him… it becomes a political act. A call to action. Fulfill your destiny, Halla.”
“Kolfinnur Grundt… there was more to it than that,” Alycia insisted.
“I know,” Max replied.
“The Prime Minister and I advised the King to pardon him, but it doesn’t change the fact that he pardoned her sister’s rapist.”
“It blew up in the Prydanian press. I half understood the people who wanted to drag him back here from Saintonge to stand trial,” Alycia replied gruffly.
“But Toby did the forgiving thing.”
“
He’d saved people,” Stig replied before looking back at the royal palace.
“Grundt did. I…” he paused.
“There's a reason your husband didn't come to an old soldier like me for advice on that one. Still… I could make peace with it.”
“There's a lot we can make peace with,” Alycia replied.
“But right now I want my husband back.”
“Where the fok are you, Hummel?” Stig muttered.
“We all followed you, because you were supposed to save us,” Halla said, her voice shaking as she raised the pistol.
“You were supposed to save us. But you pardoned a rapist. And a murderer.”
Tobias closed his eyes for just a split second, but the fear that he’d never open them again was real. When he did, he looked at Halla.
“Kolfinnur Grundt saved people. He risked a lot to save people. There are Prydanians alive today who wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for him…”
“BUT NOT MY SISTER!” she fired, Tobias winced. The bullet lodged into the bulletproof glass behind the King. She aimed again.
“Shoot him. End it now,” the Satrap growled.
“I need him to admit he pardoned a rapist. And a murderer. I need him to admit he betrayed me. He betrayed his country. Tell me, why Stina doesn’t deserve justice,” she growled. Each word was punctuated by breath conjured deep within her. Her nostrils flared as he aimed Tobias’ own pistol at him.
The earlier images of death and destruction from the war… they changed. Tobias no longer remembered the smell of burning bodies or the site or a mass grave. He no longer felt like he was that ten year old boy, helpless in the midst of carnage.
He remembered being older. He had a sense of purpose. He wanted to help. He remembered comforting a child with a candy bar. He remembered an old woman praying to God when he’d comforted her in the snow. He remembered celebrating Christmas and Miðsumar amidst the carnage but finding time for sweet things. Krista. He remembered Krista. And he remembered meeting Alycia. He remembered people. Just… people. The people of his realm.
It wasn't his because he wanted it. It was his because as a young man, no longer a boy, they looked to him. He didn't want them to, but they did. And he remanded… he wanted to help.
“I’m King, but I’m not God…one day I’ll die. And if it’s now, or decades from now, I will have to answer for my sins. Including the people I killed during the War. We’ll all have to answer for our sins, eventually, Halla,” Tobias said softly.
“Kolfinnur Grundt saved people. He tried to do the right thing, after all the bad he did. That’s more than most Syndicalists did. I granted him a pardon, but pardoning his crimes is not forgiveness. He’ll die and meet God like we all will.”
Halla gripped the gun tight in her hand.
“Shoot him now,” the Satrap growled.
“Your sister deserves justice,” Tobias replied.
“But I pardoned a man who risked his life to save people. I'm sorry… I’m sorry it meant your sister’s rapist and murderer got to walk these lands again, free. I really am, but I knew when the war was over…”
“KILL HIM NOW!”
“I KNEW WHEN THE WAR WAR OVER… we needed forgiveness, Halla. Or else it would be a cycle. Death. Revenge. Death. Revenge. We had to stop it… I had a chance to stop it. God, something… some force out there… something I knew was greater than all of us needed me to stop the cycle. So I did.”
Halla snorted.
“You've a way with words, Your Majesty. But don't try to paint your cowardice like God is on your side.”
“God isn't on anyone’s side,” Tobias replied, his voice shaking as he stared down his own gun.
“Good and evil, we invented those things. God is a force of nature. And He always sees to His justice. Halla… when I pardoned all of those Syndicalists at the end of the war, I did it because I knew that when each died they'd have to meet God. And so will Kolfinnur. God will force him to answer for his sins. Your sister will get justice. It won't be because of me or you though… and no one has to die. Too many of us have already.”
“One more needs to die,” the Satrap coldly sneered.
“It never stops at one,” Tobias answered, hanging his head.
“I hated pardoning them,” he added. His green eyes sunk down as he shook his head.
“Kolfinnur too… but I couldn't let my anger win. That's what my uncle did. That's what the Syndicalists did, but sometimes we need to rise above ourselves for the greater good.”
Halla’s hand shook…
She had held out hope that her sister's rapists and murderers would be brought to justice. And then… like that… the Prince she had believed in and the King she had looked up to had just pardoned him.
She felt her finger on the trigger, but it was like jelly. There was a will to pull it, but she just couldn't.
It was then that a ringed hand gripped her hand and the gun.
“Dear, the hour's getting late,” the Satrap said, as he stared at Tobias.
“Halla, if you kill me… I want you to know I’ll forgive you. Not pardon, forgive.”
“Why?” she asked before anger and sadness took over at once.
“WHY?”
“Because despite everything this madman has said… I’m not broken. I’m not incomplete. The war he dragged us all through, that took your sister and my parents, didn't ruin me. It made me realize just how blessed I was to have our country to fight for.”
He looked up at the Satrap.
“It made me realize… I’m proud to be who I am. I’m a King of Prydania. I'm the King of Prydania. I’ll forgive my own murderer if it’ll help my country.”
“What the fuck is that?” one of the three Ten Rings militants tasked with guarding the control centre of the palace’s central computer systems asked.
“Who the fuck cares? We cleared out the guards.”
“I saw something.”
“It's just your imagination, sand for brians!” the third guard grunted as he walked up behind the other two. Look. The moons are just shining through the windows…wait.”
He bent down and picked up what looked like a tin soldier toy.
“What is it?” the first guard asked.
“It's a Knight of the Storm,” the second explained.
“The ones all done up in the ceremonial unis.”
“What the fuck is it doing here?” the tin soldier’s legs were walking in place as the third militant picked it up off the ground.
“Saying ‘hej,’” three shots from a pistol with a silencer took out the militants from behind, as Laurids collapsed back against the wall.
“Never let a Darrow boy fish if you don't wanna get baited,” he grumbled before forcing himself into the control centre.
“Fokking relay systems,” he muttered, before grabbing his walkietalkie.
“EIDERWIG!”
“HUMMEL!”
“Is our boy still alive?”
“I wouldn't make it a point to stretch this out much longer…”
“On RALT… THEEE! TWO! ONE!...”
“It made me realize… I’m proud to be who I am. I’m a King of Prydania. I'm the King of Prydania. I’ll forgive my own murderer if it’ll help my country.”
Halla’s eyes were wide… Tobias could see the hurt… but… he could see something else.
“The War took something from everyone,” Tobias whispered.
He didn't need to say “it's up to us if we take more from each other.” It just… was. It was a haunting possibility that hung over everything.
“Halla, your compliance can be achieved in other ways,” the Satrap said coldly as he pulled a pistol from his belt and aimed it at her head.
And just then something else Tobias remembered from the War came back to him. The sound of shattering glass. He immediately yanked Halla down, pulling them both to the desk, as the shattered bulletproof glass of the window hadn't even fully broken apart yet before a single sniper bullet pierced the Satrap right between the eyes. He stumbled back… his own gun firing towards the ceiling. Tobias grabbed the pistol from Halla, and Knights of the Storm in tactical gear poured in from the shattered window.
It almost seemed to happen in slow motion. The sounds and sights just echoed for a split second that seemed like an eternity.
“YOUR MAJESTY!” one of the Knights yelled as bullets cut down the Ten Rings militants in the office.
Tobias was pulled from Halla and his gun tossed aside.
Two Knights began to restrain a crying Halla, and Tobias had to pull free from his guards.
“Halla! Go easy on her! Hey!”
“I’m so sorry…” she sobbed. She was hysterical. Crying her eyes out.
“What have I done? All of those dead people…”
“Shhh…” Tobias tried to calm her as his heart raced a mile a minute before turning to one of the Knights.
“Please…” she cried… “please…”
Tobias nodded.
“Treat her well.”
“Your Majesty…”
“Treat her well…” Tobias replied as he collapsed on the ground. Next to the Satrap’s body before sitting up.
He looked out through the shattered window. Knights of the Storm had secured the office… and he looked across the river. To the military encampment.
He saw her. And he began to laugh.
“Jesús,” he chuckled. Overcome with relief and now, exhaustion.
Alycia, his wife, was holding the sniper rifle. She had killed the Satrap. He looked over at the fallen terrorist’s body.
“Reciprocity,” Tobias said softly, as the Knights of the Storm and the Army retook the palace.
Knights of the Storm reserves and the Royal Prydanian Army secured the area around Absalonhöll as Tobias was led from the building. Ten Rings militants- those who had managed to survive- were being led out of the palace in cuffs.
“PABBI!”
“Hanna!”
Tobias picked up his daughter before embracing his wife as his twin sons Baldr and Hael hugged his legs.
“Your Majesty.”
“Colart.”
The old Norsian war dog smiled and pat his shoulder.
“I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have you fighting for your life.”
Alycia took Hanna as Tobias hugged him. Collart was, admittedly, taken aback. He and Tobias had grown closer over the years… but not to this extent.
“You saved my wife. And my children.”
Colart had to stop himself from saying he'd sworn a duty to protect Alycia at all costs. Because right now… her husband was just happy her and their children were alive.
“Of course Your Majesty.”
“Toby.”
Tobias looked up, as Stig, flanked by Royal Army soldiers approached.
“Stig! Holy fok, Stig! The Santonians!”
“You don't need to worry.”
“No you don't understand. There's a nuclear…”
“Silean, Santonian, and Ultramontese intelligence intercepted the bomb in Sil Dorsett. And…” Stig smirked. He remembered he'd met Princess Alice at a foreign state dinner a few years back. He'd been impressed with her moxy. And it'd paid off.
“... Princess Alice of Sil Dorsett ordered a strike on Ten Rings locations in Aydin. Her forces took them out. The Ten Rings have been routed in the Aydini countryside.”
Tobias paused. Alice? He smiled softly. Deep down.. well… he quietly thanked her before he turned to Alycia.
“And you shot that son of a bitch.”
“Damn straight I did,” Alycia smirked as she kissed Tobias on the lips.
“Now… where are those rings? They need to be tossed into the deepest trench of the Pale Sea.”
“I'm afraid, Your Grace,” Stig replied, “that I’ve had to authorize the ÖSU to take the rings into custody. If we can learn anything about the Ten Rings organization from them then we may be able to organize an AN hunt for any remnants.”
“Fine,” Alycia said with an exhausted sigh.
“But when Hveiti is done with them, we're going to toss them to the fishies.”
“Damn straight,” Tobias replied, kissing his wife again.
“Damn what?” Hael asked and Tobias ruffled his hair.
“Language, little one.”
Red and blue lights illuminated the scene around the royal palace… and Tobias and his family were taken into protective custody. It wouldn't be long before they'd return… certainly a shorter absence than the last time he was driven from this place. That helped. He looked at the palace. Restored from the ruin the Syndicalists had left it in… but still baring new battle scars.
Jörn had been right all of those years ago. The end of history never comes. The page just turns.
Like a Prayer by Madonna, 5:39
