Editing WS:Chapter Two (section)

====Synopsis a la Red====

A final day in the city.  The events of yesterday calmed the mind and body, as the beast we feared might still be walking the streets, slaughtering those it encountered was now dead.  Others knew nothing of our actions, my companions desperate to conceal their heroism.  The city remained locked, guards marching every hour and the day and night, and a miasma of fear filled my nostrils when I passed any group of people.

Morning was quiet, and the blade not ready until afternoon.  The trip to the crater of the egg took me the most of the morning, and much of the afternoon.  There was no change.  I returned, swimming again, somehow very tired, floating upon the gentle waves rather than fighting them.  By the time I had collected the claw-made sword my companions had loaded the ship, and we were ready to go.

For days our travel was uninterrupted and mostly smooth.  After a day of nausea, the smell of salt and the sea became as familiar to me as  that of a terror.

Passing not too far from the piratical isle of Dornica, possible distant relatives of one of my companions, a shipful of buccaneers, tried their luck with our ship.  They were driven off handily, what I assume to have been Alden's magics creating a windstorm upon their decks, while Cadmus peppered their decks and men with arrows and fire blooms.  As they never reached our sides, I did little more than assist Riso a very little.

Days again passed, our idylls interrupted by a storm, a perfect opportunity to ride out on the bowsprit as the ship rolled and plunged across the waves.  Unfortunately, the damage the pirates had caused to our mast was enough to collapse it under the great stresses of the storm.  It barely missed those few of us on the deck.

Nautical expertise saved us, and the captain and crew found ways of accounting for the lost mast, and we were soon limping into harbour.  It seems likely that news of the foul beast far to the north is spreading as every other ship was fleeing the direction opposite to us.

The story continued in town, the docks awash with refugees desperate to escape to anyway, with more, desperate for a little money for their hard-ridden horses, arriving hourly.

The dockmaster, a hideously fat and ugly man came aboard.  In negotiations of which I remained unaware until later, the ship was sold to him, by I think Cadmus and Alden, irrelevant of the fact the captain owned his vessel.

The conspiracy was revealed to me, in part at least, only later.  Accompanying Cadmus, two sailors and the captain to the warehouse district down the docks from the refugees we entered a dark, lightless building.  Dashing the light source to the ground Cadmus quickly and fatally knifed the captain and one of the sailors, injuring the third man.  He died later as I tried to defend him from the bard.  Cadmus' arguments, the necessity of money, of resources... made some sense.  But I fear love of blood blinded him, and perhaps Alden, to other options.

We continued north, the baron raising a small force of children and invalids on the way to... for some reason.  We passed greater numbers fleeing before we finally reached the river across for Elbe-Elster.  Which was now a benighted, fouled and dead land.