–==Official Submission==–
FROM: General Debinani Rahl
RE: Fathers and Their Sons…

Debinani Rahl sat in his chair, behind a desk that he was
somehow sure should be overflowing with reports and maps
and all of the other information he kept close at hand.
But it mattered little. He sifted idly through a small
chest of items his son had left behind as was routine on
missions of his nature. His stripes.
He stared at the stripes for a long time. There were so
many! How had his son grown so quickly?

He shook his head, realizing he had been staring at the
light flickering on the wall for what could easily have
been hours. The chest lay on the floor, its contents
spilled out on the stones; and in his hand he held a tiny
sketch of Xavierra.

“Both gone now.”

He jerked in his chair at the sound of the echoing voice.
An apparition stood in the corner of the room, just out of
the candlelight.

“Father?” he stuttered, trying to get a better picture of
the spirit.

“Indeed,” responded Adulphus, floating forward and coming
to rest near the globe by the desk. “You’ve been very busy
it seems,” he continued, looking over the pristine
desk, “one in your position…and with your condition… Well,
I’d think you’d be behind on your work.

Rahl looked at the desk incredulously. “Yes well…” he
started, “I guess I must have done it… I…I suppose.”

The apparition nodded, a grimace spreading across his
ghostly countenance. “Of course you did. Of course you
did.”

The door to the room opened and a well-groomed man walked
in carrying a steaming goblet smelling of herbs and wine.
Adulphus watched him gently close the door and walk across
the room to hand the cup to Rahl. He gently extracted the
sketch from the old man’s hands and pressed the cup into
its place. Rahl didn’t seem to notice. Without looking
up, the man spoke.

“You’re not wanted here Blood of Mengst, go back where
Daithomir sent you,” he said and made a dismissing gesture
with his fingertips.

The ghost’s eyes widened in surprise that the simple doctor
sensed his presence, and opened even wider when the gust of
ethereal wind ripped through his form and dispelled him
completely from the room.

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” mumbled Rahl, already
becoming sleepy with medicine, “We have never talked as
father and son.”

Doctor Ehrlich smiled softly and helped the old general up
from his chair. Leading the man into the bedroom.

“You need your sleep m’lord, I wont abide anyone
interfering with your well being.”

—

Turon gazed at the tower from the several hundred yards
away that he had been thrown. He watched the light in his
son’s bedchambers go out, and the strange man’s shadow at
the desk in the next room.

After he was satisfied that his elderly son was securely
asleep and his curious physician gone home, he stopped to
examine his surroundings. He found himself beside yet
another tower, gazing with a bemused grin at the blood-red
sigil on the door.

“The Covenant of Blood,” the ghost chuckled, “could that
bloodthirsty maniac have come up with a campier name?” The
ghost smiled at the sign for a few moments and then became
all seriousness. “I think it’s time you pay me back for
all the slack I cut you….”

The ghost disappeared though the iron doors and drifted
around the darkest recesses of the structure until he found
his query sleeping…well…sleeping like the dead.

“SERGEAAAAAAAAAANT!!!!!!!!!!”

The commanding shout echoed across all of Northwood.
Easily loud enough to wake…well…wake the dead.

And then the startled and angry dead composed himself and
realized who was shouting at him.