“We o find him, now!” Fiora insisted to the exasperated guard officer. “He might be carrying an alchemical device like the other ohere’s no way to know – and no telling how much damage it could do if it was used in the wrong spot.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that,” the officer said through a long-suffering sigh. “But we have strict jurisdial boundaries. I ’t just let you run around fighting and arresting people up here. I’ve passed your report along already, and they’re setting up checkpoints to intercept and stop any duergar as we speak. They might have passed for normal dwarves at first, but that’s not going to work when uards are actually paying attention.”

  “That’s not the point!” Fiora fumed. “He’s a warloot just any duergar. Who knows what he could do if he just hid somewhere for a while? A hostile summoner in a city full of civilians? This is a disaster waiting to happen!”

  “Ma’am, I am not uimating the threat. We’ve informed the Mages’ Guild's scryers and the Padins’ Hall and I’d expect that a bounty will be up oruders’ head with the Adventurers’ Guild within a few minutes. You have your owo worry about. Go make sure that you don’t have a team like that bursting into your shiny new district while you’re up here talking to me.”

  Fiora paced in agitation for a few seds, then she spun and walked toward Bernt – and right past him to face Josie, who he only then realized was standing right o him. His eyes widened a little at the sight of her. The Underkeepers’ Solicitor had, apparently, gotten her new gear. It was a long, open coat in dark gray to match her new colleagues. Underh she had a sturdy armored vest made of artfully overpping yers of heavy gray and dark red vas. The ehing was so heavily ented that Bernt could se from two steps away. It would probably stop a berserker, and it was mubsp;lighter than what he was wearing.

  “Josie, you’re free to go for the day.” Fiora announced before pointedly lookiward. “I’m sure you have other responsibilities to see to anyway. Go!”

  Josie blinked in surprise, but then simply nodded and started walking.

  The guard officer, whose eyes had been ohe eime, watched her go a bit skeptically and grimaced slightly, but he didn’t interfere. Bernt could practically see him decide that this wasn’t his problem.

  “Alright, everybody, back down to Headquarters,” Fiora said. “We o cover our end, and we o get in tact with General Arice – I doubt he even knows that his lines have been promised.”

  Bernt whipped his head around in surprise. That was it? There was no way. Ed probably didn’t even know what happened yet. He got up, testing his hand, and then moved to joihers. It felt as if he’d never bur in the first pce. Syrah, he saw, was still w on a few of the other injured underkeepers. Her healing abilities were really quite something.

  Something hard poked him in the chest a stopped. He looked down and found the knobby handle of Fiora’s staff phere.

  “Bernt,” Fiora chided, eyes narrowed. “What are you doing at work on your day off?” She gave him a little push and he fell back a step. “Go home.”

  Taking the hint, Bernt turo follow Josie. As he did, he reached for Jori’s mind with the familiar bond to nudge her to follow, only to realize that she was already gone. A quick glimpse through the bond revealed her rag along rooftops in a dizzying series of running leaps. She was already shadowing Josie from above and watg the streets for their quarry.

  Feeling a little unsteady at the transmitted sensations, he drew back his senses and hurried after.

  –-------

  Josie jogged through the temple district toward the Solicitors’ Office, being careful to give the temple of Barian a wide berth. The god of storms had lost aire gregation to an especially foolish orcish warlock about a tury earlier. He’d wiped the warlock from existen retaliation, but his wrath wasn’t satisfied – he’d still lost well over a hundred souls to the hells. Barian had harbored more than a little ill will toward warlocks in general sihen. It was best to steer clear of his temple whenever possible. Most warlocks avoided ship voyages for the same reason.

  Josie walked on the opposite side of the pza, passing rather close to a few other temples that she was fairly sure no warlocks had specifically offended i history, when she saw it – a dwarf ushing through a small group of people who were just… standing around, staring at nothing in particur. He had that same odd, gray aura around him.

  She rushed after, trying not to lose sight of him behind the taller pedestrians that stood between them. When she reached the group, they were just starting to look around in fusion – the first sign of recovery from having their will draihe demon had to be fairly powerful to affect multiple living people at once, css 4 at least.

  Fortunately, the denizens of the first hell weren’t especially dangerous as demo. They could incapacitate almost anyone, but a minor or lesser demon couldn’t cause any sting harm. As she pushed past them, she caught sight of the dwarf again as he stepped around a er into a side street.

  She ran to catch up. If she could reach the other warlock before he got where he was going, she could probably stop him. Her own abilities wouldn’t affect the demon, but the dwarf himself would be vulnerable.

  Turning the er, Josie saw that the dwarf had stopped – apparently he hadn’t seen her following him. He’d lifted a grate over a window well e building and was trying to climb down into it.

  “Hey!” Josie called out. “Stht there!”

  She o get closer. Just a bit.

  The dwarf stopped and looked at her, eyes widening. Then, just as he opened his mouth to speak, Josie screamed. It eing, hollow sound, like a windstorm tearing through a yon. She didn’t feel it’s supernatural effect herself, except as a painfully cold liquid sensation that froze her throat as the sound escaped and instantly gave her a headache.

  The dwarf froze, an expression of horror and deep despair written over his features. It only sted a moment, then he shook his head and gritted his teeth. She was closer now, almost close enough to reach him. Josie summoned her cws and closed the distance.

  In the space of a heartbeat, the dark color bled out of the dwarf’s eyes pletely, leaving them pletely gray. His face rexed and he said, in a pletely dead, toneless voice.

  “Stop.”

  Stop what? Josie wondered. What had she been doily?

  “It is done. You need not be ed.”

  She stared at the dwarf and, right now, she just couldn’t remember why he mattered. Rather, she couldn’t work up the effort to think about it. Why bother?

  There was a hissing sound up above her, but she didn’t look. It didn’t mean anything. Nothing did.

  Something bright and hot seared into her vision before smming down into the window well with a sizzling noise and an awful smell. It was hellfire, she knew, but the dwarf was gone. A small figure dove down after it.

  An imp.

  She watched it go by, disappearing down the hole.

  The imp’s name was Jori.

  Jori was hunting the warlock. The warlock was bad – an enemy. That meant that someone o stop him.

  As Josie began stringing cepts together into ideas, and ideas into the beginnings of a purpose, a hand nded on her shoulder. She looked up and fou standing there. What was he doing here?

  “Are you alright?” he asked, staring at her as if he was trying to see into her head.

  She nodded a little tiredly. “Go. Don’t let it talk to you. I’ll be fine in a minute.”

  He looked unsure, but moved toward the window well as if he already knew where to go. Bernt already knew where Jori was, of course, or at least where she’d been.

  There was a lot of information out there regarding what exactly a familiar bond was and what it enabled a mage and their bound familiar to do, but most of it was just based on rumors or badly outdated. Familiars just weren’t very popur these days, so few people actually got to observe them. Besides, the Mages’ Guild kept a tight lid on what they sidered proprietary information, so existing publicly avaible records had a way of disappearing.

  Idly, Josie sidered writing up a report on familiars based on Jori a. The Solicitors could surely use a reliable eyewitness report for their own local library. She would have thought that any stant telepathiion to a demon would drive a mortal pletely insane in a matter of hours. She’d seen into the mind of a midnight hag for only a moment when she’d received her third eye, and that was enough for lifetime. But Bernt wasn’t insane - he was just crazy.

  That alone was enough, now that she really sidered it. She should write a report about it.

  –-------

  Bernt swung himself down through the broken window into the basement of the building, nding in a pin-looking hallway. Without hesitating, he ran forward to the third door on the left and stepped through – following the path that he’d just seen Jori take in pursuit of the strange dwarf.

  The dwarf had Jori by the throat, her feet kig at nothing in the air as her cws gouged deep bloody furrows into his beefy forearms. She anig – not thinking straight, or she would have simply melted the dwarf’s face off with hellfire.

  Bernt wasn’t sure how the dwarf had mao catch her, but he was ready. He’d begun casting the moment his feet touched the ground five seds earlier and this time, he’d even remembered to cast the spell correctly. Being careful not to hit Jori, Bernt unleashed cold fire at the dwarf, who’d already started to turn to react to the hreat.

  As he did, a burning pain shot up his arm, radiating out from his hand and forearm. He flinched and hissed in pain as the spell fizzled and failed – mostly. A thin wisp of fire licked across the duergar warlock’s fad he gasped, dropping Jori as he drew what remained of the sorcerous fmes right down his throat.

  His eyes bulged a out a wet and raspy sounding cough. Blood ran from his mouth.

  Bernt barely noticed. He was focused on his ag hand. What in the hells was going on? It felt almost like when he’d strained his mawork during the battle against the kobolds a month earlier, but this time there had been n at all. Had he buhe spell so badly? Or had it been that other warlock’s hellfire back at the Uy Gate?

  Bernt wasn’t any kind of schor, but he was sure that hellfire wasn’t supposed to be able to do that – at least not to a living person.

  When hellfire kindled in Jori’s cwed hand, Bernt’s heart almost seized in his chest. If she threw that around in here, she could easily set the entire building on fire – never mind if the dwarf had another one of those firebombs on him.

  Jori let the fire go out and he breathed out a sigh of relief – she’d sensed Bernt’s s and interpreted them correctly.

  The dwarf looked bad forth between them now, bag away and trying to say something, but nothing intelligible came out. His tongue and throat were both damaged. Jori advanced on him with an angry hiss, murderous i radiating off her every movement. Her body tensed as she prepared to leap at him.

  “Stop!” Josie gasped, standing in the doorway before pointing a finger right at the dwarf. “Get down on the ground and keep your mouth shut tight! You’re a prisoner of the Halfbridge Solicitors.”

  The dwarf gred at her and backed up aep, his back hitting a wall.

  “Uh…” Bernt said, “ you do that?” He hadn’t been thinking in terms of taking prisoners, but even if they did, they would have t him to the city’s dungeons. He was an enemy batant, after all.

  Josie smirked smugly. “Acc to Beseri w he’s a rogue warlock, so yes. I’m not on duty as an underkeeper, and I’m pretty sure you areher. We couldn’t arrest him on the t’s authority if we wao.” Her smirk bloomed into a feral smile. “Which I don’t. Also, if he doesn’t cooperate we just turn him over to the padins in their primary training facility right up above us. I’m guessing that was his target. They have jurisdi in this area as well.”

  Gray, emotionless eyes flicked bad forth betweehree of them. Then the dwarf reached a bloody hand down to a gap in his armor, pulled out an odd-looking vial and flung it down at the ground.

  Jori was faster. She’d begun to poun the man the momearted moving aended a wing to adjust the jump in mid-air to ght past her inal target. Bernt didn’t see exactly what happened, but there was no gigantic fireball, toxic gas cloud or other indication of an alchemical attack.

  Jori rolled to her feet, revealing the undamaged vial clutched in one cwed hand and grinned, revealing needle-sharp teeth. She’d caught it.

  Bernt gred angrily and drew the long k his belt. Josie just stood there expetly, as if she’d phe whole thing.

  The dwarf dropped to his knees and y down on the ground.