Stevan Vlahovic moved with resolute purpose out of the palace after the disastrous audience with the king. With the King's departure, the crowd near the palace had scattered once more. Considering the black expression upon Stevan's face, nobody of the few left were foolish enough to remain in his path. He turned right onto the road following the outer castle walls, then took the second left, heading past the grand arena. He had no doubts that there were some truly magnificent blood sports either going on there right now, or about to start, for there was a veritable crowd of citizens flooding its entrances. Had he been in a different mood, he would probably have joined them.  

Blood sport might not have the finesse or precision of torture, but it the cheering audience more than made up for that. The mood in such arenas was often throbbing with malice and glee. “lovely places...” he muttered, then kept walking straight ahead, past the great market and down to the inner city's western gate. Once through that gate, which he absently noted only held a handful of guards, he entered the Sanctum of Idris right across the road.  

Not only were there a good gathering of other priests within, but he saw many citizens of Othea going about their worship. It pleased him to see that some at least in this godforsaken place had seen the light. Lightly scattered among the priests and citizens were other inquisitors like himself, dressed in the same dark blue robes as he. Some, the more experienced ones in particular, he nodded respectfully to. The rest, he ignored. They were unworthy of his attention.  

He moved just as resolutely through the halls, and here everyone moved out of his way far more quickly than outside. Nobody in their right minds obstructed an inquisitor of Idris in his place of power. Not more than once, at least. He knew precisely where to go. Deep down. Into the bowels of the sanctum, past several heavily guarded doors.  

The doors, as befitted his high rank, were opened well before he even got close. Soon he found the massive stairs at the sanctum's core. As before, he did not hesitate, taking them two steps at a time. When he was eight levels down below the ground, he reached the bottom. Where the walls above had been polished green-veined marble, here they were of a quite different stone. Here everything was different. The corridors narrower, the ceiling higher. The guards up above had been armed with halberds, their swords sheathed at their waists. Here, they were armed far more heavily, with their weapons drawn. Aside from the single pair facing the stairs, everyone else faced inwards, guarding the outside from what lay within.  

That, he knew, made perfect sense. This structure dated back to the days of the Old Kingdom, the evil nation that had created the accursed relics in the first place. It had, he'd been told, been built to contain rogue evokers. Of course, these days, all evokers were rogue. Which was why the Order was trying to open up as many of these prisons as possible. It was too bad, he mused, that they had not been able to find any pattern into how people became evokers in the first place. It would have been so much easier to kill them all off if such a pattern had been clear.  

He moved past more than two score empty cells, stopping before a single cell wherein an Othean woman a few years younger than him was chained. The chain was locked around her neck, stretching up to the middle of the roof. Like the bars making up the door, the chain and collar were made of a blue-tinged metal. It pleased him how the chain was just long enough for her to sit down with a modicum of comfort, but not so long as to allow her to lay down on the floor.  

Like all prisoners of the Order, she was only dressed in a fairly short smock made of cheap, brown cloth. Upon noticing him, she immediately stood up, running forward as if trying to strangle him. He could see orange-red veins all over her skin pulsating, but thanks to whatever dampening effects were imbued into the prison and the chains, there was nothing more than that. Had she not been chained up, he knew, he would now have been burning alive.  

They had been trying to kill her for months, but nothing had proven sufficient yet. She'd been captured after she burned a whole village down, some two weeks travel from the city. It had taken the lives of no less than fifty-three brave soldiers last winter to subdue her and would have taken even more if she'd not been tricked out onto a frozen pond. The accursed fire in her blood had melted the ice, letting her sink into it. Once she was submerged, the fire had stopped spouting out and eventually frozen solid once more.  

While in transport here, she'd been encased in a solid block of ice, for only here was it safe to chop her out and attach the collar. As with so many others, conditions which would have killed normal people, had merely stopped her temporarily. He shuddered slightly, then walked away laughing at her futile efforts at escaping. That was the one good thing about this place... Not a single evoker had ever escaped custody.  

The next prisoner, whose cell was at the far end of the corridor, was an elderly man, if he could be called such. He now only resembled a man in the roughest sense. Like the woman, he was only dressed in a rough, sleeveless smock. Unlike her, he did not have veins of fire beneath his skin. Every square centimeter of skin had transformed into Steel-hard, dark gray-green scales, and out from his lower spine there poked a long, lizard-like tail, with ugly-looking spines sticking up, connected to each other by a sickly green crest. The man's face was elongated, his mouth filled with razor-sharp teeth, his tongue forked like that of a serpent.  

Dozens had died from his extremely venomous bite. Of the man's mind, virtually nothing remained. Unfortunately, the cleverness of the man he had once been remained at the disposal of the beast he had become. Along his spine, the smock was stretched, perforated in places by spines akin to those cresting his tail.  

This was the prisoner he'd come for. For unlike the fiery woman, they had found means of controlling him. It wasn't a means he entirely approved of, but it did serve to make him useful to the Order. They'd discovered that he craved certain things, like fresh meat from a particularly large rodent found only deep within the borders of the dominion.  

Of course, just feeding him that particular large rodent was not sufficient to make him useful. No. They needed more. That extra thing was the reason he disliked using this creature. He nodded to the nearby set of guards, one of whom who raised a small whistle, blowing it. Less than a minute later, a pair of soldiers entered, dragging a woman between them. She squirmed and tried to get away, perhaps somehow sensing what fate had in store for her. It did not help her in the least, of course.  

The woman was a Kalnachi captive, which was far worse than an the Othean heathens. The Otheans  simply hadn't seen the light yet. The Kalnachi on the other hand, had seen it and had chosen to disregard it, practicing a profane, blasphemous version of the true faith. He had not a single positive thought about them now, and he never expected to gain any either. They unbarred the door to the cell, tossing her hard inside, then replacing the bars.  

Stevan watched with a mixture of fascination and horror as the creature caught the woman with ease, its claws wrapping firmly around her arms. Even as she screamed, the creature had its way with her. Like the beast it was, the whole process was over but a couple of minutes later. It threw her into the corner, where she lay unmoving except for her rapid breathing. He could see how her skin was already changing color, going from a healthy pink into adopting a dull, grayish green tinge.  

It was, he judged, a just treatment for the Kalnachi woman's blasphemy. A minute later, the creature stilled, staring intently at him. It was, for now, sated. It hissed out something that resembled a growl, but which he knew from experience was a question, a request for his instructions. To anyone  not familiar with this foul creature, it would merely have been a hissing growl. It had taken the inquisitors months to even comprehend the creature on a most basic level. It had taken years more to train it to a semblance of obeying them.  

He smiled at it. “I need you to do what you do best. Wreak havoc from the sewers and out along the waterfront.” He paused for a few moments, thinking. “Any female Otheans you should get your claws on, you can do with as you wish, just leave them in the sewers where they can be picked up.” The creature hissed at him, its long tongue flicking out between its scores of needle-like razorteeth. “Return in six days, and you will find your meat at the usual place.”  

Stevan waited for a moment until the creature hissed its acknowledgement, then moved to the wall beside the cell. There he pulled a lever, and the chain and collar detached from around the creature's neck. He and the others moved back, lowering a portcullis between the creature's cell and the rest of the complex. Only after that did he pull the lever opening the creature's cell.  

It did not hesitate for a moment, running at full-tilt down the corridor and out into the now-open entrance to the sewers, almost as if it were afraid they wouldn't let it go after all. Once the creature was gone, the guards at its far end sealed it up, leaving no visible trace behind of its existence. At least no trace visible from the Sewers.  

He then raised the portcullis once again and a pair of soldiers entered the creature's cell, carrying a stretcher between them. Using thick gloves, they lifted the prone body of the woman onto it, then carried her away to a place she would be properly contained.  

Stevan paid them no heed, instead turning on his heels, heading back up to the surface, where lay his personal office. There he would begin writing his coded report back to his superiors in the dominion. It was, he judged, better that he report his blunder than that they receive the report from one of their numerous spies. Despite what some might think, honesty was actually rewarded in the dominion. Particularly honesty about blunders, failures and setbacks. Concealing such would only be bad in the long run, not only for him, but for the Order as well. A setback was only alleviated by quickly employed countermeasures.  

After scribing it down, he tied it to the fastest highbird available and sent it on its way south. It would take three days to reach his superiors and three more for new instructions to arrive, but it was the only viable choice. No means existed of quicker communication over such vast distances. Until such orders arrived, he would simply have to do his best not to make any further blunders.  

While the creature was out, he resolved he'd need a really good reason to leave the sanctum. Its not that he feared it, which was to some degree true, but rather that he feared he might make further blunders. And he didn't trust the creature. While it belonged to the Order, he would never trust an evoker, no matter how trained it was. Never.  

They were all evil. Corrupted. No matter how pure someone was before becoming one, he or she would be evil incarnate afterwards. That bit never changed. Everyone knew that. He would instead spend his time interrogating a few of the prisoners. Even if no useful information came out of it, at least he could get some practice at extracting truth. There was always a benefit to take from such. He smiled to himself at that thought. Nothing, he thought, would stop the dominion from claiming this place for itself. Not if he had anything to say about it.