Byzantine.

  It was a word that Merwin Fuller had first heard during his stay at the Akademie der Magie in the north. He had had to look it up, to discover what it meant after first hearing its use.

  To think that one day he would use it to describe his own work. Truly, he was no longer the starry-eyed fool that he had once been, filled with innocence and curiosity.

  Now he knew that innocence was merely a form of ignorance, and that curiosity was the path to an untimely and gruesome death.

  Something strange was happening in the Five Peak’s Conclave of the Inquisition, and as one of the Chief Inspector Generals it was his duty to get to the bottom of it. The office he was loaned was a spartan little room, a desk at the far end, some shelves and lockers for personal artefacts and a few chairs which were occupied by a fidgeting Administrator and a stoic Paladin.

  “I do not suspect that I must explain why I am here?” he said. His accent had always been thick, no matter how hard he tried to rid himself of it, still, it gave a harsh edge to his words that made softer men weep.

  Administrator Silva squirmed in her seat and Paladin Uther was as straight as any man in his position, though the scuffs and scrapes in his uniform certainly suggested that he was not at his best. Few combatants were as proud or fierce or implacable as the Paladins of the Inquisition, and that price showed in their neatness.

  “This incident, this absolute mess, is not, as far as I can tell, the fault of the local Inquisitors,” he said.

  The Administrator almost sank in her seat before remembering herself. “Yes sir, thank you sir.”

  “Nonetheless we will be going through a full inspection and evaluation, a subject has escaped our grasp, one of the most dangerous seen since the Inquisition started its work. More, I believe it might have been freed by another subject. Paladin, your report, it was complete but I want your opinion.”

  Paladin Uther nodded once. “The Seventh Night Guard Rotation, group two, were on the scene first. They are some of the only ones that had more than a fleeting glance of the second subject. The anomaly appeared to be a young humanoid with erroneous appendages. Tentacles, essentially. We classify her as a biological modifier, an anomalous mover and perhaps a shifter.”

  “Dangerous,” Fuller said. “Administrator, I require the file on Anomalous Subject One-Oh-Four-Two.”

  Administrator Silva nodded so quickly her shako almost flew off her head. She pulled up a briefcase and slipped her thumb into a hole at its top. A few pulses of will rang through the room as she pushed a specific pattern into the case’s locking device, undoing the many locks keeping the documents within safe.

  The case was opened with a pneumatic hiss and the Administrator pulled out a file which she passed to him. “I, Administrator Silva attest that Chief Inspector General Fuller has the Classification required to view this document.”

  “Witnessed,” Paladin Uther intoned.

  There was a large red three on the front of the file. He pressed a thumb to the number and pushed his will into it. It revealed the circle hidden within the folder and he deactivated the security countermeasure with a few twists of his will.

  Everyone in the room had classification at or above level three. Though he suspected he was the only member of the Inquisition at Five Peaks other than the Site Director with Class one.

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  He laid the small pile of sheets within the document before him and began reading them.

  “Do you have the report for Incident AS dash One-Oh-Four-Two B?” Fuller asked as he deposited the report. Administrator Silva nodded and began extracting the appropriate document from her case. “This situation is a mess. We have not one but two Anomalous Subjects loose in a city of this size. Subjects with human appearances.” He shook his head. “Paladin Uther, do what you must to find these subjects. We cannot let them harm the populace, or worse, end up in the hands of some cult of degenerates. We need to put an end to this mess and as soon as possible. For the greater good of humanity.”

  “For humanity,” the two Inquisitors intoned.

  Fuller nodded. He could only just imagine the amount of paperwork this mess would lead to.