Episode 1

The Hierophant stares at Maeriks, waiting for an answer.

Then she breaks the stillness. The silence.

She looks down and to the left. She raises her left hand slightly, but then puts it down. She takes a small step back.

After stopping briefly, she looks back up and scans the room. A bit of a surprise on her face, but only briefly, and then it is gone.

She turns gracefully, takes a few full steps back to the Throne. She turns smoothly and sits down on the chair. She takes a deep breath in and out.

Scans the room again.

Her hands rest lightly on the arms of the imposing, imperial chair. Her fingers move up and down a few times then settle to a relaxed grip on the far edge of the hand rails.

Now perfectly seated and squared away, she looks back to Maeriks.

"Adept, I await your answer."

The Eight Stars Above the Chair begin to glow.

A pale, sick light.

From the crowd of women nearby, Laoise speaks up. "Say something, Maeriks. Get Rutcranna to let us out of here."

Then others follow up.

"Help us, Maeriks. Please!" says Aisling.

Jilleen calls out, "Fight for us, Maeriks!"

The Deep Ones grab the girls roughly by the arms and cover their mouths with their webbed hands.

Still on her knees, held down by two Ulathi captors, Boann turns her head sharply away from Maeriks when his eyes cross by hers.

Maeriks intends for:
(Plain persuasion here...)
* Let the mercenary company to go and fight Glaaki.
* The barren women should go and fight Glaaki too, since this would be the most useful thing they could do. Or just stay here and wash linen.
* Maeriks should go with the barren women and mercenary company so that he may control the barren women. They are unruly and need him there to ensure they perform their service.
* Send the Ulathi to increase the odds that the fight against Glaaki is successful. (In Maerik's mind, he sees the mercs ordering them around, but I don't think Maeriks would express this opinion.)

(Partial deception here...)
* Send the Ulathi out to leave the women nearly unguarded. There probably isn't any chance they could ever get out of here, but having less fish around might make them feel better.

The Hierophant, sitting on the Throne is intermittently looking up at Maeriks and shifting her gaze down and to the left. She is back and forth between paying attention and not paying attention.

Kray has moved forward now. The slight push of unseen force that he could feel on his chest has diminished. He is now only about 10' from Sorcha Rhone, who still lies on the floor sleeping.

As Maeriks talks, the Ulathi are enamored. They look back and forth between him and The Hierophant. Even some of the ones who are closest to him are just turning and staring right at him as he speaks, which is somewhat unnerving.

The Hierophant listens, and squints as she stares at Maeriks. She looks down and to the left.

Thorn finds that the immobilization force is subsiding. He is getting his control back to his limbs.

The Hierophant snaps back to attention, glaring at Maeriks.

When Maeriks stops talking, she says. "There are signs that The Transition did not go well for you, Dur-i-Galzu. The vessel in which you have inhabited is retarding your intellect. I told you that the women were to be held here. I want them taken below."

She puts her hand on her head, and rubs her eyebrows, as if addressing a headache.

She moves her hand back to the Throne arm rail and speaks out into the crowd. "Gobryas-Gun, report to me. Where are you? I have heard your voice. Approach The Throne."

She shakes her head, confused. And then barks out orders in the foreign language.

A Deep One emerges from the crowd to approach the Throne. He bows and awaits command.

The attending Deep One snaps to action, he speaks out to the Ulathi around the women. They begin to grab the women and corral them, taking strong hold on them.

To Maeriks, The Hierophant speaks again in the foreign language.

She looks down and to the left, pausing. She looks back at Maeriks, with a blank look, confused, she asks him, in Dannein, "Why do you wish to leave? Why did you say that?"


She mouths words, whispering to herself, for several seconds...

The Hierophant snaps back to look at Maeriks. She stares at him. With a concerned questioning look, "Are you deceiving me?"

She looks back down and to the left, but then shifts back to make eye contact with him. Her black eyes are cold. Ruthless. Angry.

Kray looks down at Sorcha Rhone, still sleeping. The girl is only two steps away from him now.

Thorn watches Kray. And Maeriks. And Ivor. He tests his movements carefully and slowly. He has all of his control, no sign of the invisible force.

Bryn stands back near where he landed. His hand is in his pocket. He feels something. A coin?

Ivor looks down into Doirind's eyes. She is starting to look away, as if off in the distance. He has seen this look before many times, in the eyes of men standing at the threshold of death.

Doirind shakes her head and looks up at Ivor. "This is not going well." She glances over in the direction of Maeriks.

Doirind breaths in and out, shifts her weight to sit up, pulling on Ivor's shoulder. She smiles at him, "I'm feeling better every moment as it turns."

The wound on the side of her rib cage is oozing dark sticky blood. Her face is pasty and loosing color.

She looks over towards the Throne, and then across on the floor. "Rhone is a good girl," she says. Then she shifts her eyes back up to Ivor, "But fuck Rutcranna Daol."

Without calling any attention to her movements, she holds her hand out in her lap, fingers extended open, tilting towards her drusus. Ivor still holds it.

"I am ready," she says to him. "Either way."

You have a feeling that time has stopped, or at least the passage of time has been thrown into extreme slow motion.

You can feel every muscle and bone in your body. Your senses are heightened in a way that you have never experienced before.

You can hear your own breathing. And your own heartbeat.

As you look around, all things around you are frozen. Not exactly, but they move in a slow drag. Your movements are like that as well, but you are sensing everything.

You look around the room. You notice for the first time the perfection of symmetry in this structure. The circle is perfect. All points within it can be graphed and plotted with precision. Everyone is moving within this grid, within the circle. 360 degrees of unobstructed clear perception.

The Ulathi are moving as slow as sloths.

You can hear their breathing. See their chests rising and falling.

You can hear their heart beats. Feel their pulses.

You can hear the scrape of the alligators' claws on the floor. You hear their leathery scaled skin drag against the stone as they shift.

You know exactly the distance to all places in the room.

You can have perfect control of every muscle in your body as it moves through the circle of the room.

You are aware of all space and time here.

The Throne is the center of all things here. Everything else is placed around the center, so you know exactly where all things are.

All things snap back to normal time and movement.

The scene is the same.

But still you feel the precision, the order, the exactness of all things in the Throne Room.

The Hierophant says a short phrase to Maeriks, in the foreign language...

As Bryn approaches Rhone, near Kray, he can see that the Deep Ones are beginning to wrangle up the other women. Once one of the girls is taken hold of and subdued, the fish-men go on to the next.

He can only suspect that soon an Ulathi will turn to come and get Rhone.

Bryn sees that most of the Ulathi in the back of the room (Ulathi G4) are moving forward, many shifting over to assist in the detainment of the women, others stepping forward into the free space in the lower right cut of the circle from which Kray and Bryn had just moved.

When The Hierophant is looking away, Bryn nonchalantly tries to wake up the girl without being noticed for doing so.

The Hierophant's head eases away from Maeriks as he talks. She looks over at Kray and Bryn, standing near Sorcha Rhone.

With a heightened awareness, Bryn perceives that he may be discovered, and tries to adjust.