"How stupid am I." The rhetorical question was asked only of herself, for there was no one else around to hear it save whatever animals were lurking within the darkness. Perched on the highest point of the North facing wall that surrounded The Belanger House, Neikla watched as a possession of people filed through the gate and made their way bringing with them goods and services for the upcoming event Nasheima was planning. Neikla had spent the prior night making a fool of herself. Having mistaken Mendel's show of concern for more than it was. In retrospect she was only thankful she had not made some stupid attempt at returning adoration of her own. Even as her thoughts strolled over the mistakes she had made, the albino kept watch, making sure that none of the service people ventured into places that would cause them harm.

The Belanger House was old and build atop a structure that predated anything written in recorded history. Within the very bowls of the house, under layers of earth and build into the very bedrock was a room unlike any other. Circular, it had been carved from vainless white marble. The wall depicted bodies, all tangled, limps and bodies bending and melding into a mass of confusion that seemed somewhere between panic and jubilation. Faces twisted, distorted in silent screams. Hands reached, clutching, begging to be pulled from the face of the wall. So realistic and detailed were the images carved into the stone, one might have believed they had been turned to marble and placed there. Diaphanous layers of aspen-green silk lay like a fog about the body of the woman known as Nasheima. Moving with smoldering grace, she entered the room, moving towards the center where lay a frozen pool of milky fluid. Sun-kissed digits touched, leaving their imprint upon the surface as if the fluid was made of some viscous liquid that had a delayed reaction. Shrugging shoulders sluffed the silk from their hold, leaving the woman as bare as the day she was born. Stepping from the silks, nude feet stepped upon the surface. Slowly the milky liquid spilled over the sides of her feet like thick, white paint. It climbed up her ankles, slowly dragging her down until she was buried up to her neck. As the warmth of her flesh spilled into the stuff, the viscosity of it changed, turning more like that of butter-milk. "We are curious...we are wanting.." The voice came from everywhere. Both male and female, a whisper and a scream, melodic and horrifying in pleasure and pain. Aspen-green eyes watched the wall. Looking from one area to the next, then returning her eyes upon the first features only to find they had moved. it was always the same. She never saw them move, but every time she looked back, something has changed. "Things can not be hurried, mistakes will be made..." She spoke with the same tone as she might use upon a lover. "We have all three of the Sundered...everything is falling into place.....patients my dear, patients...." The liquid around her rippled in waves of vibrations as the voices came again. "We want out." "All in due time...." She purred, softly caressing the surface of the liquid. "No one suspects a thing. Only one might have stood in our way, but his preoccupation with his beloved wife has rendered him....null-and-void." Seeming overly pleased with herself. " Isn't love grand..." and at that she laughed, overly pleased with herself at not having to deal with Alec much at all.

"Everything is falling into place...." She mused, laying back and allowing herself to float within the fluid, she let her mind drift, relaxing with a satisfied smile upon those sun-kissed features.

Nasheim sat within the great room, a room that was a testimony to all the great women that had conquered, men, nature, and even God by some measures. Fictional and non-fictional women, slayers of dragons. Human and non-human. Elves and Dwarfs, every culture having their own story. Each one having conquered a specific evil, each on possessing that singular remedy born to combat such calamities (or possessing that by which to bring such calamities about.) The room was filled with artifacts from around the globe. Statues, carvings, paintings, sculptures. From books to bones and everything in between.

Over the fire hung one such painting. It was old, stained, the images captured within dimmed with time and smoke. Colours once bright and crisp now dull and muted. Only upon close examination could one make out four figures standing around a central orb, their hands clasped together, forming a circle. It would have been a simple thing to clean the painting. All the others within the room we restored to their original glory, all except the one over the fire. Time seemed to have ravaged it, the wooden frame pin-holed by beetles, not dry rotten and falling apart.

Soft rapping upon the door, a moment later one of the girls that served within the House entered. "Alkine has...returned. Do you want me to..." The girl motioned, but was never sure of the gender of the person in question, or even if it was a person. None of them had ever seen even a glimpse of skin, or anything to indicate one gender over the other. Nasheima offered an acknowledging motion of her hand, one that the woman took for a yes. She turned out the door to inform the waiting party, only to find them having vanished. "....they have..." Turning back into the room to inform her mistress of such, and finding the pale shadow of Alkine already standing beside Nasheima's table. With a sigh she turned, closing the doors. "That one gives me the creeps." Whispering to herself.

Nasheima never looked up from the book she was proofing, those aspen-green eyes slowly ping-ponging back-and-forth across the page. Licking her index finger before turning the page. "Well...?" She said, waiting.

"As you instructed, I followed Neikla. There seems to be some strange developments between the three of them. A breaking. " The voice, raspy, it too offering no indication as to the gender. Dressed from head-to-toe in dusky grey, even the face was covered by a blanket of grey gauze that obscured all features.

"Go on..." Nasheima waves, glancing up from the page for only an instant.

"There has been an.....indiscretion between the Healer and the Smith. Though, I would not be so quick to say it was of their own valuation. Something about it was not......right. This fact did cause Nasheima to lift her eyes from the page, looking to the figure as if she could somehow see past that shadow and witness those features.

"You suspect another hand in this...?" Her eyes narrowed, the shrewdness of her nature painted its way across that sun-kissed brow.

"No, not indirectly, but more from the Smith himself, but if he is aware of such I am unsure as I left to follow Neikla, who..........as you suspected took off after Brenya and Alec, a fight ensued to which Neikla lost most of her right hand. Alec defended Brenya's right to choose and remain with him. Neikla returned to town, to the inn.....I have just come from there. Neikla is still alive." Alkine was direct and to the point.

Nasheima mused over this information for some time. The book she had been reading was closed with a loud clap, a hand on either side of the cover, as if she might pray. "It would seem there is more to this Smith than meets the eye. I would hate for him to get in the way,......he has proving to be a beneficial distraction for our Neikla." She thought for a moment longer before speaking. Then stood, leaving the book in the chair she had just risen from. "I want you to watch Luki....if there is something amiss about this Smith, she will know. Reach into her dreams if you must and ferret out what she knows."

Nasheima turned away from the Pale Shadow, but then, that figure was already moving towards the door. She never heard a sound, not a whisper to give away the passage from the room and it was only her eyes that told her Alkine had departed.