The Empire of Zeth/Chapter 4 (Ero)
Ranth's arms reach out, trying in vain to grab Evy as a dark energy envelops him. His senses are cut off - for a moment that feels like an eternity he can feel nothing. He's not even sure if he's still alive. "EVY!" he screams into the void, though no sound comes out. Then, all of a sudden, the darkness cuts off. He thumps onto hard stone flagstones, breathing hard, his blood pumped full of adrenaline.
Many spears are leveled at his throat, he doesn't move, but does look up and realizes for the first time where he is. Ranth was in the Cathedral of Light, located back in the heart of the capital city of the Zeth Empire, Coravan. The holy warriors of the priesthood leveled spears comprised of pure high magic at his throat. He dared not move a muscle.
A hooded figure behind the spear wall moves toward him and gestures. A blazing white aura of pure holy light floods over Ranth. He braced for pain... but it didn't hurt at all. It actually felt.. nice. Peaceful; serene. After a few moments of calming peace, the aura faded.
"Stand down." a voice Ranth knew very well said. "He is clean." The holy warriors pulled back their spears of light. In unison they slam the butts of their spears onto the ground two times, and they vanishes. The warriors then file out of the room as High Priest Emery of the Imperial Order of Holy Light approaches Ranth.
"Ranth.. You're... alone? What happened to young Evy?" Ranth tries to speak, but his strength fails him at long last. He collapses and Emery catches him, blacking out.
...
Hundreds of miles away, in a small town between the border and the capital, a young initiate of the Church of Holy Light stood watch over the ley line point in the town's small chapel. It was a duty all initiates had to undertake, though it was very boring as nothing ever happened. The young woman yawned sleepily as her shift needed it end.
"Why did grandfather need ME to cover this shift so badly..." she grumbles aloud. "My boyfriend and I planned our rendezvous so carefully! There's no way he could have known what we were planning to do down by the lake tonight..."
She was just about to go fetch her replacement when the ley crystal pulsed brightly. The woman stopped and turned in shock. "High priest!" she bellowed into the metal tube that served as their communication line. "The ley crystal... it's shining! C-Come quick!"
Turning back to the crystal she gulped. This was NOT part of her training! She began casting basic warding spells in the air in front of her. A strange humming sound came from the crystal as the light shone bright and brighter until her vision was filled with nothing but blinding white light... then the light and sound both suddenly vanished. The young initiate blinked her eyes trying to clear them. When she could see again, there was a small girl standing at the foot of the massive ley crystal. Evy let out a moan and she collapsed, passing out on the stone floor.
The poor terrified initiate ran back to the communication tube and yelled again. "G-Grandfather, a g-girl came out of the c-crystal!! P-Please h-hurry!!!"
...
Ranth's dreams were filled with frightening demons, mind-tearing eldritch horrors, and thousands of other unspeakable sights. He ran past them all, determined to find her. "EVY!!!" He shouted. Rounding another corner, Demon King Elron's form rose out of the floor in front of him, toasting him with a goblet of blood. Evy's broken body lie at his feet. "NOO! EVY!!!" He dropped to his knees, taking her limp body in his arms and hugging it tightly to his chest as wept. Elron's bone-chilling laughed echoed those Ranth's mind as he swam back towards consciousness.
His eyes flew open, and his body surged upwards. Strong hands gripped his shoulders. Ranth's heart pounded in his chest as his addled mind struggled to make sense of what he was seeing. A voice was shouting in his face, but it took him a moment to be able to understand what it was saying.
"Ranth! Ranth! My son, you're safe! You're home!" His father shook his shoulders again. Ranth's muscles relaxed. "F-Father??" He is eyes finally focused on the concerned face of his father: High Lord Tristan, Holy Knight Commander and first seat of the Imperial Council of Zeth.
"Ranth... my son... you're safe now!" Ranth found himself squeezed very tightly by his father as he wept openly. "The priests weren't sure you'd... you'd wake up..!"
"I'm okay dad... Really. Just... tired." Lord Tristan squeezed him tightly one more time then let him go. Wiping his eyes on his sleeve, he sat back in his chair. Ranth was in a small private hospital room inside the Great Cathedral of Coravan. Bandages wrapped around his ribcage and a lot of other parts of his body.
"Father..." Ranth's mind finally caught up. "EVY! Where is she!? Is she okay!?" Lord Tristan frowned. "The drow refugee girl that master Garth sent to rescue your train? She.. she didn't come back with you. I'm sorry son. I know it may sound selfish of me to say, but I'm just so grateful to her for returning you to me. She won't be forgotten."
"B-But... You don't know that she's d-dead! We have to s-save her!" Ranth tries to get to his feet and winces in pain. "Son! Calm down! We can't - Carthidge fell! That land is now the property of the Infernal Legion! You are blessed to have made it out alive - no one else has! If that girl hadn't been on hand and capable of teleporting such massive distances to get to you in time..!" A tear runs down Lord Tristan's cheek.
Ranth's shoulders slumped. "Sh-She... she was so strong... and so brave. I tried to protect her, but she wouldn't let me..."
I'm sorry son... She may not have been from the empire, but I make sure that her sacrifice is no-" A loud knock sounds at the door. Lord Tristan gets to his feet quickly and answers it, to find High Priest Emery standing there.
"My lord, she's... she's back. We don't know what to make of it." The priest looks shaken.
"What!? How is that possible? Where!?" He grabs the priest by the arm. "A few hundred miles from here in the small town of Riverthorn. They say she.. came out of the ley line."
Lord Tristan turns to address his son. "I have to go, Ranth. Stay here and do what the priests say!"
"B-But, father! Who is it? Who did they find???" Lord Tristan rushes out of the room. Ranth turns to Emery. "Emery?? Who did they find?" Emery only turns and leaves the room, closing the door behind him.
...
Evy comes to in a dark room. Her whole body aches, as if each tiny bit of her body had tried to fly off in a different direction. Wincing in pain, she sits up and looks around, finding herself in a small cell with a featureless door. The door is practically swimming in powerful high magic protection and warding spells.
Groaning, Evy rolls onto her knees, and realizes how cold she is. With a start, she suddenly realizes she is completely naked. "M-My c-clothes..?" she shivers, wrapping her arms around her flat chest.
Evy gets to her feet with a small cry of pain. "HELLLOOOOO?" she shouts. "P-Please... L-Let me out..!" she starts to cry, and bangs her fists against the door. Nobody answers and, she collapsed to the floor. Evy curls up in a ball and cries herself into hick-ups, more memories of another time she was put alone in a small cell flooding her mind. She had only ever been taken prisoner once... and the memory was something she could never, ever forget.
...
Memories flashed through the young girl's mind. She had been training with Master Garath for a few years. Evy had been getting frustrated with him not giving her a field assignment of her own - she was ready! Finally Master Garath had begrudgingly given her an assignment, saying that he guessed he should let her have one before the overly willful little girl tried to find one on her own. He gave her what he thought was a very simple, very safe assignment. Their intelligence network inside the empire's borders was sublime, and it was rare for a report to be so wildly incorrect... but unfortunately, this was one of those times.
Evy had been tasked with locating the hideout of a smuggler's ring operating out of the port city of Brine Cliff. Evy gleefully set off at once, barely even hearing her master's strict orders to observe ONLY and report back as soon as she found out where they were hiding. The little girl had nodded so fast her head was a blur, then saluted her master and vanished in a quick dark burst of magic. The city was less than a day's ride from the capital and it would cost her very little power to shadow step there.
Arriving in the city of Brine Cliff instantly, Evy eagerly began her reconnaissance assignment. She quickly located one of the smuggler's contacts, mentally scoffing at how easy the assignment was looking to be, but still thrilled to be on her first assignment. She tailed him through the city, using a seeming spell to appear to be an ordinary little human girl. She skipped up and down the street like any other child around, making sure to keep moving when he turned to look for tails and never make eye contact as she'd been taught.
The sketchy man lead her to the edge of the city, and left through a side gate onto a small trail that lead up the coast. Making sure nobody saw her, Evy had tucked herself into a nook in the wall and shadow stepped into the woods off to his side. She continued following the man, who eventually turned and took an almost invisible trail down to the water's edge. Evy had kept him always in sight but stayed far back as she was taught, and finally he lead her to the lair. It was inside a nearly invisible cave mouth on the water's edge.
Evy had cast a lesser invisibility spell on herself and silently slipped into the cave mouth behind the man, pressing up against a back wall as she watched him. The man knocked the stone smooth wall in the back of the cave several times in a special rhythm Evy quickly committed to memory. The illusion covering a side passage vanished and the man walked inside. Feeling overconfident, Evy had edged up and examined the entry way. She looked over the runes with her magical sight, nothing their functions and placements.
Evy knew this was the time to return with the information, but her desire to impress her master with her skill overtook her common sense. She would get even more information from them, then return. He'd be so impressed that he would give her much more interesting assignments! The protections on the doorway were trivial, after all - low level spells probably cast by some novice who fancied himself a wizard.
Evy had stepped over the threshold... and too late realized her mistake. The sloppy protection spells were themselves an illusion, one covering up much more powerful alarm and suppression spells. Her invisibility was immediately dispelled, and a trap door opened in the floor. Evy tumbled down a long narrow shaft into a deep pit.
Cursing her stupidity, she tried using her agility to leap back out, pushing back and forth off the walls propelling higher and higher. A mist filled the shaft, making her eyes water. She recognized the spells in it - they were very powerful sleep spells, cast at quite a high level. Luckily for Evy, her drow heritage made her immune to sleep spells. She focused on continuing jumping out of the pit, again making another fatal error. She could have cast a warding spell, after the first mist entered the shaft, but she was once again overconfident. A second, different mist was released and filled the shaft.
Evy's foot had slipped as it went numb, missing the final leap that would have propelled her out of the shaft. Her arms grew heavy as the paralyzing agent in the new mist began affecting her. As it was not inherently magical but derived from a chemical produced by a living creature, the paralysis draft in the air affected her like it would anyone else. She'd dropped back into the pit and hit the bottom with a smack, knocking the wind out of her.
Evy lie there, fighting to breath with lungs that would not move. She finally managed to get her arms moving enough to perform a basic spellcasting gesture and cast a basic, very sloppy warding spell that saved her life. She could breath again, but she could barely move. Evy's mind had swam as her world spun. She dimly noticed a dark shape peer down over the pit, and recalled feeling a dart shoot down and prick into her neck before passing out...
Evy had woken up in a cell much like the one she was in now, with no windows and only a single featureless door covered in shifting runes. As she had lept to her feet, a voice from all around had said, "I never thought I'd get to see a real drow, let alone capture one. Aren't you a little young to be an imperial spy, little girl?" Evy had cursed at him in her own tongue, and gestured at the door. A small bot of red fire shot at the door from her fingertips and exploded, as the eldritch blast she'd unleashed obliterated the runed door as if it were nothing.
A dart had shot into Evy's back from the wall behind her in the room as she ran through the open doorway. Evy snarled and ripped it out, warding herself with an ironskin spell. The next dart fired at her glanced off her hardened skin, but the enough of the potent neurotoxin had already entered her body. She had stumbled forward and threw the man who grabbed her into the wall several meters away, then her leg gave way and she dropped to one knee. This time she remembered her training and cast the silent alarm spell designed to let order know a field agent was in trouble without being detected.
Out of the far room a man in a red robe emerged and waved his hands. A wall of frost appeared and rushed at Evy. She clumsily countered it with a general warding, the small amount of toxin she'd been dosed with making it very hard for her to concentrate. Another mage behind her that she hadn't seen cast a paralysis spell at her. It slammed into her back and dissipated, leaving her unaffected. However the impact had made her loose her balance and topple forward onto her belly. The wizard in the red robe dispelled her ironskin warding and the next dart pierced her neck. She had blacked out again...
The next time Evy awoke she was stripped naked and strapped down on a table on her back. Her arms were clamped down above her head and her legs drawn open and clamped down beneath her. "Oh, you're finally awake I see." a voice said from somewhere behind her head. She tried to swivel to face the speaker, and found she could barely move, and not just because she was strapped down. Her muscles all felt like limp noodles. Horrified at her ultra weakened state, Evy's eyes had gone wide.
"It must be very uncomfortable for someone like you to feel weaker than a newborn kitten. I admit you were quite a challenge - I've never had to pacify someone with so many innate natural protections and immunities that could not be removed. But I eventually devised a toxin that would sap your strength sufficiently, as well as a neural blocker to prevent you from using magic. That one took several days to perfect. You're quite a powerful specimen, little girl. You're going to net us a fortune!"
Evy tried casting a spell and found, like he'd said, that she couldn't. Terrified, she instinctually tried phasing out of the shackles using shadow magic. A dark aura appeared around her left hand and she got it free before a shadow played across her mind and she forgot what she was doing. Shaking her head, she began trying to rip the shackle off her other hand, but she was too weak. "Drat, I thought I had balanced the mix right. Your natural affinity for casting shadow magic from your own magical aura did prove an extremely difficult to overcome. None of that..."
A pale hand had grabbed her free hand and pulled it back to the shackle while a needly plunged into her neck. Evy had scrabbled at hand holding hers and managed to slash his wrist with her sharp, extremely strong fingernails. "Ouch! You got blood on my good robe! You're pay for that, brat!" Evy tried casting shadow magic again but whatever he'd injected her with had worked and she felt the power slip out of her hold the moment she grasped it. He forced her weakened arm back into the shackle it had escaped from and slapped her cheek hard. He punched her nipples hard and raked her flesh with his finger nails.
"We've never broken in a slave as powerful or as strong-willed as you, I will admit, but you WILL break like all the rest. Some wealthy foreign noble will pay a handsome sum to add a live drow to his collection, especially a young, strong female..." A hand moved down to Evy's thigh and pressed up against her immature sex.
"What the hell are you doing, you creep! You DARE touch me there!?" Evy had yelled at him. "Oh, so it CAN speak? I was beginning to think you were some kind of feral animal that needed to be whipped!" The sound of a whip did indeed crack behind her. "Give her fifty lashes. Don't worry about damaging her - my tests showed that she heals insanely fast with no scarring at all. How fascinating!"
Evy felt two people move a couple meters away from the table she was strapped to. The voices whispered very quietly, but her keen pointed ears still heard them clearly. "I need to go devise a way to brand her, so take your time. If you chose to do more to her after you finished the whipping, I would never know." A cruel laugh echoed across the room as Evy sensed one person leave. The whip cracked again and a man walked in front of the table this time. He was shiftless, heavily muscled, with a hard grizzled face. "Don't worry, little bitch! I've never failed at breaking in a new slave, and I don't intend to start now!"
The whip lashed out across Evy's chest, leaving a reddened welt on her smooth ash-colored skin. "WHEN I GET OUT OF THIS, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!" Evy had screamed defiantly at him. He had only laughed and landed the second lash on her cheek. "I'm gonna enjoy this - for once I won't have to hold back!" He lashes her nude body more than a hundred times, while Evy screamed defiances at him. Finally he lost his patience with her unwavering will and strode forward, seizing a chunk of her in his fast and pulling her head up right close to his face.
"Alright, fine. I admit it, little girl - you're tough. Maybe you just like being whipped, or maybe those imperial spies are better than I thought at training even their youngest agents to resist torture. Well, it doesn't matter. Thankfully there's a much better way to break a little girl..."
He'd slammed her head back onto the table and punched her in the stomach. While she wheezed, he had walked to the end of the table and jammed three large fingers into her cunt without warning. Evy screamed as he tore her hymen, and dark black blood flowed out of her slit.
"Still a virgin, eh? I guess you weren't quite as much of a little slut as I thought." Continuing his violent fingering, her mused, "Or is it that it just regrows each time like the rest of you? If that's the case, you're gonna make us even more money than we thought! An eternal virgin... I know some buyers that would pay us anything we asked for a chance to get their hands on one of those!" Evy sobbed and continued cursing him as he roughly took her virginity. She would rather die than tell him anything, but she really had been a true virgin. A chill had gone down her spine at his words. It wouldn't hurt this much every time, would it..?
Evy had spat at him, not wanting to let him think he'd won. Her aim was good and it landed on his face. "Fine, if you're that eager to continue..!" He had pulled his fingers out of her snatch and wiped them on a cloth. Evy's glare had faltered slight as the man took off his pants and slapped his very long, very thick, very erect cock against her belly. "Are you scared yet, little girl?" He had taunted her. "If you promise to be good and do whatever we say, I might it quick..."
"N-Never!" She had cried out defiantly, though her heart pounded in her chest as she looked at just how big he was. "I w-will never submit to gutter trash like you! I WILL get out of this and I WILL kill yo-" The man cut her off by slamming his entire length into her tiny pussy in one swift, hard thrust. Evy had screamed at the top of her lungs as she was violently raped by the horrible man. He grabbed her side and hammered into her, laughing as she cried herself into hiccups.
"Hahhh, fuck! Your little drow pussy is so tight, brat! I haven't had a good fuck in ages! Here it comes, you little slut!" He came inside her. Evy had shuddered, feeling his semen being unloaded inside her tummy. It was a sensation should would never forget... He pulled out of Evy, the table beneath her a mess of cum and blood. "How was that, slut? You broken yet?" Evy had swallowed hard, her whole body shaking. "N-N-Nev-nev-ver..." she stammered. "Good, I was hoping I'd get to use you again!"
He unshackled her and tossed her over his shoulder, carrying her to a cell and tossing her limb body inside. "I hope that heals up night and tight." he taunts her. "I can't wait to use you again, little brat!" He had laughed as he walked away. She'd rolled onto her back and sniffed. She'd sent the message - her master would come for her... wouldn't he? Evy cried herself to sleep in the dirty cell.
The man raped her again the next day, and the next. The torture wizard tried many different methods of permanently branding her, which all failed for one reason or another. On the 3rd day Evy had finally come up with a plan. She knew enough about torture to know that even she would break eventually, and had to make her move. Unbeknownst to them, she spent her time in the cell trying to grip her magic even through the drugs they kept pumping into her. She finally managed to get enough control to do something very basic, like bolster her natural resistances to drugs and magic. The next time they injected her, it was a little bit less effective. The time after that, a little bit less still.
Evy had made sure to keep up the act, pretending to be as weak as always. As she repelled the drug more and more, her grip on her power grew along with her natural strength. Finally she judged it to be enough, but she would have to strike when the torturer was least expecting it. She would have to let him rape her one more time...
He came for her like he always did, and dragged her limp body out of the cell. Evy pretended to put up a feeble fight like she always did as to not making him suspicious, careful not to use her returning strength. She scrabbled at his arms weakly as he dragged her by the hair the to chamber and strapped her to the table. She screamed and cried as he forced his cock inside her tiny pussy - at least she didn't have to put on an act for this part. She shuddered as he came inside her for the dozenth time, and pretended to be beaten down a little bit more when he picked her up and carried her off towards the cell over his shoulder.
When he moved to open the cell door, she had prepared to make her move. "Back in you go, brat! Admit it, even you can't take much more of this. I know you're close to breaking, don't try to den-" Evy scissored her legs over her squeezed, throwing her upper torso backwards with all her restored strength. He stumbled backwards and fell on his back on top of Evy. The impact didn't hurt the strong little girl an she flipped her body around to wrap her legs around his neck as she choked him. He thrashed and punched her, but he couldn't shake her free. "I TOLD you I'd kill you for that!" Evy had snarled at him as she finished the job and suffocated the horrible man.
Untangling herself from his lifeless body, Evy got to her feet. She took the key ring off his belt and spat on him. Catching her breath, she decided to look into the other cells in the hallway. Evy felt a black rage fill her heart as she saw they were all filled with young girls, who's ages ranged from toddlers to young women in their late teens. All looked battered and broken, with no hope in their dim eyes. She would make them PAY!
Evy concentrated. She called her soul bound eternium rapier to her side, and it appeared in her hand. She did a few swings, testing her condition, and was pleased with what she saw. Closing her eyes, she let her magical sensed roam, and found the location of the evil mage who'd done so many horrible things to her. Shadows appeared around her body and she stepped to him in a room on the far side of the hideout.
As she materialized, he whirled. "How did you bypass my medicines!?" He demanded, throwing bolts of power at the girl. Evy slowly walked toward him, rage twisting her usually cute face. Her eyes shot daggers at the evil man as she made no attempt to block the bolts of power he threw at her. He wanted him to feel fear like he'd made her feel! He kept backing up, panicking as she shrugged off his magical assaults like they were nothing. Nothing, just like what he was about to become.
"I c-could make you very wealthy, you know!" he pleaded pathetically as he searched frantically for a way out. She'd backed him up against a wall. "I know people, very powerful p-people! They'd be very displeased if you killed m-" Evy slashed his right arm, the one he'd first groped her with, cutting it clean off. He screamed in pain, but she wasn't done with him. She flung a firebolt at him, which cauterized the bloody stump and also badly burned the right side of his body.
"P-Please!" He cried, "I will g-give you anything you w-" Evy ran him through, gutting him with hate filled eyes. "You will know no heaven or hell - begone from existence you horrible monster!" Evy let loose a flood of pure shadow magic, enveloping them both. He screamed like a doomed animal as pure shadow magic ate into him, devouring both his body and soul as he faded away into nothingness."
Evy had then shadow stepped around the entire hideout, brutally slaying each and every last one of the brigands. She saved the man she'd followed there for last. He'd tried to flee, and made it as far as the cavern entrance before Evy caught up with him. She slashed his hamstrings from behind as he saw her and turned to run. Her senses registered movement outside the cave. Reinforcements? It didn't matter - they would all die too. Raising her sword over her head, she prepared a death blow for the man bleeding at her feet. "HALT!" a voice cried from outside the cave. "DROP YOUR WEAPON!" Evy ignored it and drove her rapier through the man at her feet's heart. She ripped it free, and turned to the cave mouth, determined to not stop until they all were dead...
Her sword clattered to the floor of the cave. Soldiers from the Imperial Army marched into the care, leveling spears at her as they surrounded her. Evy put her hands in the air, then a voice she knew very well cut through the air. "STAND DOWN!" Her master pushed through the soldiers, flanked by two other members of their order in battle dress. He took one look at her, naked, filthy, and covered in blood... and seized Evy in a tight hug. Evy had let go of her rage in that moment and cried into her master's tunic. He tried his best to sooth her, taking note of her condition with shock and anger.
The soldiers streamed into the hideout to search the place. "Th-The... a-all th-those g-girls..." Evy sobbed. "S-Save them..." She held up the key ring to him. Master Garath grabbed the keys and called the army lieutenant over, handing him the keys. "We will make sure they are all returned to their homes and receive the best care the empire can offer. I'm so s-sorry Evy..." He scooped wrapped the girl up in his cloak and scooper her up, carrying her out of that horrible place.
Evy later learned that the fatal flaw in their intelligence was missing the connection between the small time petty smuggling ring being used as a front and the major human trafficking operation that funded it. A great noble in their own empire was even discovered to have been protecting the operation. He was tried and publicly beheaded. Evy had insisted on going to the execution, and watched from under a heavy cloak by her master's side as he died.
She would never forget...
...
So lost in remembering is she that she doesn't notice at first that raised voices are arguing outside the door, coming closer. Evy sniffs and tries to listen. The voices are shouting, but even her keen pointed drow ears can't hear enough through the shielding on her cell to tell what they're saying.
The door rattled. Eye placed herself by the wall on the blind side of the door, hoping to take whoever opens it by surprise. The door opened and she heard a young man's voice. "Y-You cannot, sir! I have strict orders from Lord Tristan himself to keep her in here!" Evy readies her attack. A figure walked into the cell. Evy jumped at him with a scream and he whirled and grabbed her out of the air. Her eyes went wide as she recognized the man who held her aloft.
"M-Master! Master..." Evy cried again and hugged then man tightly. Lord Garth, leader of the order of the Devout Hand, hugged his youngest and favorite student back as tightly as he could while she cried into his tunic. His long white hair was combed as fine and neatly as ever. He had strong high cheekbones and the worn face of someone who has seen a lot of life. His mustache hung long, draping down to his chin on either side of his mouth.
Master Garath's hazel eyes stared at Evy with an intense kindness and love. "Evy... I'm so happy you're safe. We feared the worse when young Ranth came back alone..!"
Evy continues sobbing into her master's tunic. He gets to his feet and walks out of the room, cradling her in his arms. The young knight standing guard outside the cell protests intensely. "M-My lord, I m-must protest! You c-cant take her from here! I have orders to-" Master Garath snaps back at the unfortunate knight. "You can tell Tristan he can stuff his cowardly orders! How could he think he could keep her from me! I am the head of our intelligence arm, for all that is holy! If he wants to see her, she will be home! In her room! Under MY protection!"
He rubs Evy's back as he carries her away from the dungeon, whispering calming things to her softly as he cradles her tightly. "There, there... It's over now. To think Tristan would do something so horrible to you after what you just did for him... disgraceful! We're going home, Evy." As soon as Master Garath takes a single step out of the prison, white light flares around them both and they vanish.
Chapter 5: Reunion