[i]"...and I beheld a cow eating a golden goose, and lo, it began to move across the desert and walked into the sea, crying "here is the man who slew his mother's son!"  I tell you that the black stars align!  The Eye opens!  The deceiver, that old serpent, Sothis, trembles, spitting forth his venom, for he knows the hour of his reckoning has come!  The day of judgement!  When all hellbound souls shall rise from the desert soil to make war upon the kingdoms of God!  I see its gaze upon you, faithless harlot!  And you, profligate fool!  I see it upon... no. NO!!"[/i]

--Friar Caius Bacon, prior to his last, fatal seizure

[hr]


Linus Kolbe rode in silence.

He had stared, expression invisible beneath the blank iron visor, as the nation of Vicenna had ceased to exist, as though dragged to the bottom of some hellish hourglass.  Watched as the dust settled in a great, horizon-spanning cloud.  

And then, with a creak of tortured metal, he had simply turned, mounted the panting mare that was once the plaything of a spoiled child, and ridden slowly away.

[hr]

Of all the horrors Kolbe had seen, nothing approached the magnitude of what they had witnessed.  Vicenna, the Opal Expanse, garden of the oases, warren of sorcerers.  The second greatest civilization in the desert.  Gone.

And he felt nothing.

There was bickering, as they rode, shock, numb silence.  The boy, unworthy of Kolbe's scrutiny -- for now -- he had no one left to betray them to.  His ragged brother, delirious from his ordeal, babbling, a deep and suspect obsession with whores.  The captain, wrung as close to despair as the sorcerer.  The King, a dark burden growing upon his shoulders.  All agreed word must be carried to those who may next face the black foulness that wormed like a cancer through the desert's heart.  But none of them, these men of valor, of majesty, of learning.  None of them knew what to say.

But Kolbe had no doubts.  Nay.  It could be nothing else but the end of all things.  Sothis was rising in the east.  Surely the black star hung above them even now, drawing and goading [i]his[/i] putrid offspring to muster for the last great war.  The last days.  There was a metallic creak as his fist tightened murderously on the reins.  They would not find him wanting.

He straightened suddenly in his saddle, remembering something at the thought.  He drew the black scepter from a saddlebag, held it horizontally in the palm of his hand, leaning slightly toward Gawain and Marcus, resisting the urge to break the foul thing and cast it away.

"Wizard," he grated, breath wheezing metallically through the helm, "Know you of such as this?  Did your masters..." another dry breath hissed through the visor, "...hold such?"