"What the fuck was that, Shy?" Ara growled when he re-entered their room.

  "Ashleigh." Shiloh sighed as he shut the door behind him. "She came to apologize, and to assure me that she is actually unable to repeat her crimes."

  "She wanted to apo-" Ara was yelling, and ignored Elnor's attempt to calm her down. "-logize? For fucking raping you?! I'll kill her myself!"

  Ara materialized her magical battleaxe and made to move past Shiloh. He stepped in front of her, and the two danced for a moment as she tried to get past him without shoving him.

  "Ara, stop." Shiloh said quietly, but firmly. She gnashed her teeth, but ceased attempting to leave the room.

  "I can't fucking believe she had the balls to show her face to you again!" Ara hissed, venom in her voice.

  "Ara." Shiloh whispered. She looked down at him, clearly fighting to control her anger. "We are not going to enact our own vengeance on her now. If she makes a true recovery, I may even consider forgiving her. I don't know. Right now, I don't even want to think about her anymore. So, please, drop it. She only affects us as much as we let her."

  Ara's jaw clenched and ground back and forth for several heartbeats before she vanished the battleaxe and growled again. "She better not show up here again."

  "I doubt she will." Shiloh sighed. "She seemed like she just had to get it off her chest. Come on, let's just rex before..."

  A knock at the door interrupted him. Shiloh sighed yet again and turned around, opening the door to find a servant waiting there.

  "Good evening, Lord Sutton. Dinner will be ready soon. Would you and your companions like to dine with the viceroy, or shall I have your meal delivered here to the room?" The man asked stiffly, keeping his eyes focused solely on Shiloh.

  "We will dine with Viceroy Chambers." Shiloh said evenly, betedly offering the servant a smile. "Please, lead the way."

  ***

  "Welcome, valued guests!" The viceroy's voice echoed across the dining room as Aphrodite's Apostles filed into the room. Chambers was sitting at a rge, round table with a woman Shiloh hadn't seen before. There were seven open chairs at the table, so the seven members of their party all sat down. The viceroy smiled around at his dinner company, allowing them to settle in before speaking again.

  "Thank you for joining us for the evening repast. This is my wife, Sarai. She is the love of my life, and the only reason my coffers are full." He ughed merrily, and his wife gave an exasperated smile. "I find that matters of state ill-befit me but, when my cousin died, I was the only heir to the throne here in Chattery. Sarai, on the other hand, is a shrewd negotiator and master of all things political. If we didn't need to keep up appearances, I would sooner let her sit on the throne than occupy it myself!"

  "That is because my darling Hans would rather be in his boratory." Sarai retorted smoothly. Her voice had an accent Shiloh had not heard before. Now that he thought about it, aside from the changes in tone that came with changes in race, he didn't know that he'd actually heard anyone with an accent on Glitnir.

  It wasn't immediately apparent why Sarai had her vaguely middle-eastern accent, but she seemed aware that her voice was uncommon in Chattery. She introduced herself to each of them, then expined that she was a native of Geth, but that her father had sent her to the mainnd when the demonic invasion took pce.

  This was the second time Shiloh had heard that phrase. The first time was when Elnor had said the old avatar of Aphrodite was fighting the demonic invasion in Geth. He supposed he'd learn where Geth was when they got their map in the morning, but he was intensely curious about what kinds of demons there were, how the people of Geth and Glitnir were fighting their hordes, and what exactly was causing them to invade.

  "If you would allow me to discuss business before the first course is served, I would like to know what happened with the Scarlet Hands." Sarai asked politely, gncing around at their party. "We had nearly come to an accord with them. Their leader, Garth, was supposed to sign the deal st week, and we have not seen hide or hair of him since, until the guards escorted him and the other survivors to our dungeons earlier today."

  "Did they not tell you what happened?" Shiloh asked, bewildered.

  Sarai looked at him coolly. "I prefer to have unbiased accounts from all parties involved, whenever possible."

  "Oh, that makes sense." Shiloh responded easily. "Well, we had just emerged from the Bonedust Mountains after rescuing Viktora, and we were heading back to Chattery when they attacked us. Elnor was taken in a trap, and the rest of them jumped from their hiding pces to assault us. It was well-pnned and well-executed, but Twil was able to hold them off long enough for Katerine to inflict massive damage to their company. After that, they immediately surrendered and gave us no more trouble all the way back to Chattery."

  "Did they give a reason for attacking you?" Sarai asked. She looked as if she'd bit into an apple only to discover it wasn't ripe yet.

  "They said they'd been chased by drakes for a long time, were unable to properly hunt, and had been fighting off starvation for a long time. When they saw us, I suppose their stomachs got the better of them." Shiloh shrugged. "We didn't want to kill any of them, but they weren't exactly waiting around to talk it out."

  "You need not fear prosecution for defending yourselves." Sarai sighed. "This complicates matters greatly. On the one hand, you've saved my husband from further public scorn by ridding the countryside of the bandits we were trying to negotiate with. On the other, we were attempting to negotiate a treaty that would allow the Scarlet Hands to live peaceably, and to offer their bdes in service to our fiefdom if under attack by demons or monsters."

  "And now you're missing a good numbers of able-bodied fighters." Shiloh surmised. Sarai nodded. "Well, Garth said there was a splinter faction of the Hands that left when he started negotiating with you. They're still out there somewhere, likely attacking more people."

  At this, a door in the corner of the room opened, and several servants entered bearing trays loaded with food. Sarai gave Shiloh a look that pinly said "We'll talk about this ter", and he nodded in response. The servants set the ptes down in front of everyone, and Shiloh was pleased to see sides along with a main course. This hopefully wouldn't be a seven-course meal or something.

  The steaks they were served were absolutely delicious; a rich, buttery fvor complimented by herbs and garlic pervaded the meat, as if it had been marinated for a few days. It was accompanied with a vegetable that looked simir to broccoli, except the "trees" looked like willows. They were tasty enough, though fairly salty. There was also a mash of something simir to sweet potatoes and rge dinner rolls. Shiloh and his girls ate gratefully, happy to have such a delicious meal they neither had to prepare or pay for.

  The topics of discussion were fairly light, but Elnor was able to keep a facade of conversation rolling throughout the meal, often using her allies as much as their hosts. She spoke with Hans about the tunnels they'd discovered going through the Bonedust Mountains, which he found fascinating and Sarai found arming.

  "We will need to inform the emperor." Sarai said, making to stand from the table. Hans pced a hand on one of hers, and she stilled.

  "Peace, Sarai. One meal will not determine the difference between sealing those tunnels and our nds being flooded with vampires. We will draft a letter to Harkon after dinner."

  Shiloh was thrown by this ckadaisical attitude in ruling a fiefdom. Sarai also seemed perturbed, but she remained in her seat. After that, Hans tried to find anyone that had a basic knowledge of what he called "the ws of reality". Apparently, none of Shiloh's girls were well-read on the subject, not even Twil. When the rest of the Apostles expressed their disbelief that she hadn't read every book in existence, Twil merely shrugged.

  "As, I had hoped to find one among you who might be able to offer a suggestion on the phenomenon I discovered yesterday." Hans sat back, carefully chewing a piece of his steak.

  "What did you find?" Shiloh asked, curious.

  "Don't engage him." Sarai sighed, shaking her head. "It won't get any better."

  Hans grinned at his wife, then turned to Shiloh and began talking. "Imagine, if you will, a narrow gss tube rounded on one end and filled with quicksilver."

  "Quicksilver?" Shiloh asked, looking at his lovers.

  Hans harrumphed. "Quicksilver is a liquid comprised of water, sand, and aluminum dust. The aluminum provides a silver sheen, giving it the name. It is viscous and impossible to pass air through, as its density does not allow for air bubbles to form. It is also somewhat gritty, thanks to the sand."

  "Okay. So you have a narrow gss tube filled with it, and the tube is only open on one end?"

  "Precisely." Hans leaned forward with a gleam in his eye. "Now, tell me, what would happen if you turned the tube upside down, pcing the open end into a bowl of the same substance, but not lowering the tube itself into the bowl?"

  "The quicksilver would flow back into the bowl." Elnor responded immediately. The other girls nodded along, but Shiloh contradicted her.

  "Some of it would, but not all of it. You would end up with a column of quicksilver suspended in the tube, with a small space at the top." He said, appreciating Hans' eyes growing wider with every word he spoke.

  "Now how in the hells would you know that?" Hans demanded. Sarai stopped eating and stared at Shiloh, halfway through a bite. Her eyes gleamed with delight at someone finally besting her husband's riddle.

  "It's the proof of a vacuum." Shiloh expined. "Air cannot pass through the quicksilver or the gss, so nothing is able to repced the quicksilver at the closed end of the tube when it tries to drain. If nothing can enter the tube, you end up with a ck of anything, known as a vacuum. It exerts a force on everything around it, pulling towards its center in an attempt to fill the void with anything it can. The gss is too stiff for such a small vacuum to effect it, so the only thing that can be affected is the quicksilver. Thus, the force of the vacuum is pulling the quicksilver up while gravity is pulling it down, and it stops in the middle."

  "I thought you said you knew nothing about the ws of reality?" Hans accused, wagging his fork in Shiloh's direction.

  "I know nothing about them under that name. Where I come from, they're known as the ws of physics."

  "Physics, eh? Yes, I can see that. Physics affecting the physical world. Quaint." Hans took another bite of steak.

  "So, what do you pn to do with the vacuum?" Shiloh asked, grinning.

  "Do with it? What could you do with it? Proving the existence of something that only functions by removing all of everything from an area has no practical application." Hans waved his fork dismissively.

  "Perhaps not." Shiloh said with an air of intrigue.

  Hans snorted. "Very well, Lord Sutton. How would you employ such a phenomenon?"

  "Do you have hoses?" Shiloh asked the table at rge. His girls knew he meant in this world, but Sarai was the one to answer.

  "Of course we have hoses." She said, arching an eyebrow.

  "Okay, imagine this, if you will. You have a well sitting on a tall hill, and a vilge at the bottom. If you were to fill a long hose completely with water, much like the gss tube with quicksilver, and pce one end of it in the well and the other at the bottom of the hill, what would happen?"

  "A vacuum would form in the middle." Twil responded.

  "Correct!" Shiloh said proudly. "What would happen after that?"

  "The vacuum would pull water up from the well..." Hans said with a revetory whisper. "That's right, isn't it? The water in the tube on the hill would pull with a greater force than the water in the tube hanging in the well. Thus, a vacuum would be established that is pulling water up from the well until it passes the highest point and joins the water on the hill, pulling up more water from the well."

  "Exactly." Shiloh said, leaning back in his chair with a smile. "Water would flow through the hose, all the way down to the vilge. You could put a stopper in the hose when it's not in use, and nobody in the vilge would ever have to climb the hill for water again. This application of a vacuum is what we call a siphon."

  "Outstanding. Marvelous. Such ingenuity." Hans seemed to be lost in thought. Sarai, however, was eyeing Shiloh with a new and calcuting stare.

  "It would seem that your reputation as the cleverest man in the city has come under fire, my love." She said teasingly to Hans.

  Not to be embarrassed, Hans shook his head. "Not under fire, completely obliterated. Never in my life would I have thought... Where are you from, exactly, Lord Sutton?"

  "I grew up on a world called 'Earth' before I died. Aphrodite reincarnated me here, on Glitnir, to assume the role of her avatar." Shiloh responded evenly. Hans didn't bat an eye, but Sarai looked like she'd just had her wildest dreams, and darkest fears, confirmed.

  "So, what kind of magicks do they use on Earth?" Hans asked, intrigued.

  "We didn't have magic on Earth. We used physics, technology, and science to create complex machines that achieved a great deal, but they were far less effective or useful as magic." Shiloh expined. He felt he did a poor job of reting the advancements of the industrial revolution, the space age, and the computer age, but it wasn't like he was going to be graded on it.

  "Fascinating. How did y-"

  The door to the dining room smashed open, and the guard with a scar across his eye barged in, red in the face and breathing hard.

  "What is the meaning of this?" Sarai demanded, rising to her feet. "Captain Leids, expin yourself!"

  "The city..." Leids huffed, catching his breath. "...is under attack."