Fenrir made it back to camp undetected by use of Shroud while in the city and his cloak once outside. He briefly attempted to make his way entirely through the sewers, but before long was forced to give it up lest he fail to reach camp before noon. 'I have to wonder if possibly the original purpose of these tunnels was completely different. They're so convoluted that it's hard to believe any half-sane city pnner would have had anything to do with their construction.'

  Once back at camp, he sent a message to Safara and before long received an answer, though he noticed that the light rune was considerably dimmer than it had been at their first test. 'Still, that's a max range of what, five miles, maybe up to ten if I push as much magic through the circle as it can handle? Not half bad, and if I can figure out how exactly magic propagates, I may be able to increase the range even more. If I ever need to have covert agents in the capital itself, it would give me quite an edge to be able to communicate with them instantly and quietly over any distance.'

  The rest of his party made no secret of their interest in what had happened on his second excursion, so over breakfast Fenrir shared his adventures. "Guess that rune studying you were doing has really paid off, huh?" Kira commented when he finished. "I looked through that Rune Index a couple days ago, but I couldn't make heads or tails of it."

  "So now Safara can send us a message if trouble threatens," Katari murmured, her brow furrowed in thought. "The possibilities of this circle of yours may reach far beyond what we can now imagine."

  "Oh, I'm well aware," Fenrir replied. "If I can extend the range further, not to mention integrate a telepathic link into the circle... Well, let's just say I've seen the possibilities of instantaneous long-range communication, both in peace and war."

  "Even as it is now it is a formidable tool. This will give you a considerable advantage against your enemies, my lord, if you utilize it to its full potential."

  "Yes, and I fully intend to do so, but for now, let's focus a little closer to home. Namely, how to get Safara out of there without making things any worse. Right now, the only sure way I see is if she is cleared of suspicion. Then she could leave freely, ostensibly for somewhere like Ellevandra, but in reality she would come back with us."

  "What about the reason we came to the capital in the first pce?" Kira pointed out.

  "Simple enough," Fenrir smiled. "If we can get Safara cleared of suspicion then her story would be accepted, which means there would be no reason for the Vigil to send anyone our way. I wasn't able to investigate the citadel as closely as I would have liked, but from what little I was able to pick up it sounds as though the king is mostly concerned with the Tethoros Empire, so he isn't likely to be interested in us unless we do something truly egregious. Anyway, after my run-in with the princess, poking around there further would be foolish, at least until things calm down. The reference those two priests made to a new dungeon made it sound as though such things are at least semi-frequent, so the Vigil is likely to be busy enough with those to let us simply slide under their radar from now on."

  "Um, what's a radar?" Chellise, who been listening quietly thus far, asked.

  "It's a device that uses electro-magnetic waves to- you know what, I'll make it easy for you and say that what I meant by 'sliding under their radar' was simply 'pass unnoticed by them.'"

  "Oh." Chellise seemed satisfied, but Kira was less so.

  "Then why didn't you just say that instead of that electro-whatsit nonsense?"

  "It's a fairly common saying where I'm from," Fenrir replied, grinning at Kira's perplexity. "I didn't stop to consider that you'd have no idea what I meant when I said radar. Not important, anyway. What is important is that if we can think of some way to make the Vigil fully accept Safara's story, we can consider the objectives of this trip more or less satisfied and save Safara in one fell swoop. So, any ideas?"

  "That will not be easy, considering that none of us are accepted in the eyes of the Vigil. I am perhaps the least hated, being an oni, but even I would almost certainly be denied entrance even to the city, much less the cathedral."

  "Wait, it's not a case of kill on sight for you like it is for us?" Kira interrupted in surprise.

  "Sometimes, but not always. Some more open-minded individuals tolerate us. The importance which honor holds for us and the strictness of the code which governs our lives makes us considered to be less savage or dangerous than some Dark-races, but we are still a Dark-race, so most Light-races hate us simply for existing."

  "Three guesses which side the Vigil falls, and the first two don't count," Chellise quipped.

  "Precisely," Katari replied, smiling.

  "So then, that doesn't leave us with a lot of options. It's not like we can prove her right in any way, is there?" Kira frowned at the fire.

  "Considering the whole point of her story is that there is no evidence other than her word, I don't think so," Fenrir agreed. "Well, let's think it over. Maybe some idea will come to one of us if we take some time to turn the problem over in our minds. I forgot to mention it, but I stopped by the smugglers' dead drop I told you all about yesterday and found a message. It's encoded, but I memorized it just in case we could find a way of breaking the code. Let's see..."

  Grabbing a piece of paper and a quill, he soon reproduced the message he had found. "No idea what it means. Any of you know of any way to decipher this?"

  The paper made its way around the campfire, but no one could make anything more out of it than Fenrir had.

  "Well, we'll hold on to it. It may become useful down the line, but right now, I should catch some shut-eye."

  Fenrir stretched himself comfortably out beside the fire. Chellise, who had had the st watch, snuggled up beside him, and together they drifted off to sleep.

  Kira and Katari, on the other hand, continued their conversation. Perched comfortably in the crotch of a rge tree, they debated ideas in low voices while keeping watch for intruders.

  "What if we used the princess somehow?" Kira asked.

  "How? Does she not hate and fear us as well?"

  "I'm not so sure. I could be wrong, considering I wasn't actually there, but to me it seemed like there was more to it than just that she hates or fears the boss for whatever reason. I mean, why would she go looking for him for hours in the middle of the night if she was afraid of him? Maybe if she hated him enough, but if she hated monsters that much, wouldn't she be more focused on them and less on this smuggling ring? It doesn't add up."

  "I admit, it does seem odd," Katari said slowly. "But to what cause would you attribute her actions?"

  "This might sound weird, but I think the boss has a sort of compelling presence to him. You know, the sort of pull that you feel when he really looks at you? Have you felt it?"

  Katari nodded slowly. "I did not know how to put it into words, but I understand what you mean. You think then that the princess also feels this?"

  "It's the best guess I've got. I mean, he tackled her and stared her down. If he did that to me, I'd be a mess. Probably mostly down there, but you get what I mean. She might not even know what it is she feels, but I bet that's why she wanted to find him."

  "He did overpower me once, in that very way," Katari said softly. "It was an... intense experience."

  "Oh, right, during your duel! So you think I could be right?"

  "Very possibly, but that does not answer the question of how we could use her to clear Safara of suspicion. No matter how fascinated she may be by my lord, she is unlikely to acquiesce to any requests we may make."

  "I dunno, I was just fishing for ideas. We know she wants to find the smuggling ring, so maybe we could barter the encoded message for her help with Safara somehow."

  "But we cannot prove that it actually is from the smuggling ring, and even if we could, how could the princess help? She was very obviously nowhere near where the incident supposedly occurred, and she does not know Safara in any way so far as we know. Even if she wanted to help, I do not believe she would be able to assist in any meaningful way." Katari's expression turned thoughtful. "It may be useful to my lord to have a princess in his debt for other purposes, however. We should mention it to him once he awakes."

  So they did once lunch came, prompting Fenrir to hum thoughtfully. "Could be useful, but so could this smuggling ring if we can find it ourselves. I was mostly searching for them out of curiosity, I don't actually have any stake in whether they're caught or not. They have a pretty tight operation to have so little information about them leaked for such a long time; I could make use of an operation like that. Not that I really have need of such at present." He nodded at Katari. "If we ever do need to dismantle their network for any reason, working with the princess as much as possible wouldn't be a bad idea. It would build goodwill with the royal family, and their resources would no doubt be useful in tracking and cornering the various members of the ring. Of course, opening any sort of dialogue might prove difficult, especially after my blunder at the citadel."

  For the next several days, things proceeded fairly smoothly. Kira began to show a slight belly, which disconcerted her until Fenrir assuaged her concerns by apprising her of the real reason for it.

  "You know, I never really thought about if I'd like to have children, but the thought that they're yours makes me really happy somehow," she told him during a post-coital cuddle session.

  "I'm gd you feel that way, because having you carrying my children is deeply satisfying to some of my most primal instincts," Fenrir replied warmly, his voice a deep rumble in his chest.

  "Yeah, I bet," Kira snickered. "Still, it's kinda amazing that you even can impregnate me. I'm a succubus, after all. I didn't even think we could get pregnant. I guess you just break all the rules, huh?"

  Fenrir chuckled, idly caressing the red-haired succubus' stomach. "You've seen nothing yet, girl."

  Kira smirked. "Oh, really? Then I look forward to seeing the next impossibility you put to shame."

  By night Fenrir explored the city, checking the smugglers' dead drop each night, but no new messages appeared. Despite the smell, he also spent time exploring the sewers, trying to discover a quick path between the exit south of the city and where the secret passage into the Cathedral connected to the sewers. The only thing this endeavor garnered him was a conviction that either a madman had designed the sewers, or they had had a very different purpose originally. 'Or both,' he thought grimly when he discovered yet another passage that wound back and forth randomly before twisting back to meet itself in a singurly aimless manner. 'At this point I'm starting to wonder if these tunnels even adhere to Euclidean geometry.'

  Above ground he found more success, though he did have a few close calls with guard patrols. Before too long he was cursorily familiar with most of the districts of the city. He kept his distance from the citadel itself, but otherwise he roamed over the whole of the city, storing knowledge against the unknowns of the future. He visited Safara a few times, but things remained rgely unchanged in the Cathedral. Whatever measures, if any, that Commander Valtos was taking to verify Safara's story, he had kept them hidden from her despite her best efforts to discover them.

  By day Fenrir trained with Katari, studied runeworking alone as best he was able, and slept. Twice he hunted to replenish their food supplies, and any extra time was usually spent in the company of his girls, brainstorming strategies or simply enjoying each others' company. They took care to keep a close eye on the rune circle which Fenrir had dubbed his 'magical telegraph' in case Safara sent a message.

  One evening almost a week after they had first arrived at the city, Fenrir's party was gathered around their fire shortly after sunset, enjoying an evening meal before the great lupine made his way into the city. After several days in which no one had been spotted within a mile of their secluded gde, Fenrir had rexed his caution slightly, no longer requiring a sentry if he was awake and in the camp. 'My senses are sharp enough that in the event that someone does come this way, I should detect them well before they're aware of us,' he reasoned.

  Just now, however, he was expining the rules of one of his favorite card games from Earth. "Yes, if there's at least three consecutive numbers that's called a run. The run can be as long as you choose unless you didn't start the hand, in which case it has to be the same length as the run which started the hand. It also has to start at least one number above the end of the previous run. Of course, if you're starting the hand, you can start at two if you want."

  "Okay, I think I get it now," Chellise said, her brow furrowed in concentration.

  "It'd be easier to understand if we pyed a hand or two, but unfortunately the necessary cards won't spontaneously manifest just because we want them," Fenrir shrugged.

  Kira snorted. "At this point it probably wouldn't surprise me, but you should see if you can't steal a pack of cards in the city tonight. It gets a little dull sometimes sitting around camp, especially now that you've restricted my sparring."

  "Better safe than sorry," Fenrir replied. "With how fast your children are developing, I don't want you doing anything that could endanger them, or yourself for that matter."

  "Come on. I'm not made of spun gss, and they're your children. I doubt I could hurt them even if I wanted to," Kira said, rolling her eyes. Then her expression turned contemptive. "I guess I'm compining more for the sake of compining than anything else, though. I don't really mind dialing back my training if it's for their sake." She rested a hand on the visible bulge in her stomach.

  Katari cocked her head. "I have not heard of 'dialing back' before."

  "Oh, it's a phrase that the boss used a while ago. I guess I just kinda picked it up. I'm sure I don't need to expin what I meant by it," the pregnant succubus grinned across the fire.

  Katari gave an answering smile. "No, I understood that much. But what does-" She broke off as the magical telegraph, lying open on a bedroll to the side, suddenly lit up and began fshing a message. In an instant the camp was transformed from a scene of indolent ease to one of full alertness as everyone's attention became riveted on the small light rune.

  Grabbing a quill, Fenrir copied down the message as it came through. [H - E - L - P -- A - R] Then, abruptly, it cut off in the middle of the next letter. "Dash... dot... dot? Or was that meant to be a dash?" Picking up the notebook, Fenrir quickly fshed a message back. [P - L - E - A - S - E -- R - E - P - E - A - T] But though they waited for over a minute, no reply came.

  "Safara's in trouble, no doubt about it. I'd better get over there as soon as possible." Swinging his cloak to his shoulders, Fenrir vanished into the underbrush, leaving the girls to exchange worried gnces behind him.

  TheBestofSome