On the slope of Mount Blakat, a single wild rakhtor claws at a thin layer of snow, pecking at the hard-packed ground beneath in search of live food. Not far off, the open mouth of an abandoned mine shaft yawns, a dark hole in the earth. The surrounding snow-covered rocks and slopes around are otherwise uninteresting, offering nothing morethan a view of the tree-line and the distant countryside far below.

Doubly disguised, a Gallah who was once a poodle rests, prone and invisible against a bare gray rock from which sunlight has melted the snow. Only the rakhtor's tracks scar the snow near her perch, and she watches, silent and almost motionless, as the Procession slowly crosses the sky. Her eyes flick, from the shaft's mouth, to the position of the stars above, and time creeps past.

"See the Thief?" Stalker asked. She could hardly see him, just a shimmering outline of an Eeee against a backdrop of snow, his words a distorted whisper. The constellation the bat named – one he had made sure she marked the night before – was far easier to place. "See where his hand is? If it dips below the mountain's side, from your vantage point now, go."

The mage did not need to say where she was to go, or why – or what might have become of him, if he had not yet returned. They had been over the plan several times already. There were two other teams just like this one: one shadow mage, one backup. Each had similar goals: plant the triggered spell-disrupters Fyiara had fashioned at their assigned ritual sites. Elise and Stalker were to cover the sites on Mounts Blakat and Rephath.

The canine needed to mark time by the stars because she could bring no timepiece that she'd be able to see – for if she could see it, so could others, and what would a pocket watch be doing by itself on an otherwise empty mountainside? She did not fully understand the nature of the spell that concealed her. Mage Stalker was not the enthusiastic teacher that Fyiara was, but he had covered the basics of its effects. "You'll be virtually invisible, inaudible, odorless, and without a magical signature. There's also a component that will make you less likely to be felt, if someone brushes against you, but don't rely on that working. But none of these protections are perfect. If you shout or otherwise make a loud noise, odds are others will hear you. Move slowly when you have to move at all; you're most vulnerable to being seen when moving, and if you move quickly you'll definitely be spotted. Cling tight to the rakhtor when you're flying on it; you'll blend into it rather than the sky. That'll hide you."

"And stay calm," Mage Lanthia had added in. "Your smell will be stronger when you're feeling strong emotion. Sheer terror can be as loud as a shout, in scent." She gave a brief, dry smile. "Don't wear perfume."

Drogon, the last of the shadow mages, nodded. "The spells will all be set at a fixed duration: six hours. They should last even if something happens to us. But they'll … work better for us than you. That's why we'll be going in first."

And now she lay where Stalker had left her, her neck growing stiff from keeping her eyes at the same level, lest she alter the relative position of the star that the mage had called the Thief's Hand. It must have been at least half an hour since the other had flown into the mine. He should have been back by now, she thought.

The star she marked time by dipped a little lower, hanging on the curve of the mountainside. Time trickled past. The Thief's Hand vanished behind the mountain.

May the First Ones grant him success, and mercy … The ex-poodle slowly rises from where she had been hiding, keeping her back to the mountainside. Once up, she hunches over to make her outline less visible as she moves and begins taking a path back to her rakhtor. She walks the bare stones so that they may provide extra cover, hoping that her slow movements and choice of path will better conceal her.

Elise, disguised as the now barely visible Gallah Missy, sticks to moving across bare stones. In this manner she avoids leaving prints in the snow. When she moves out as far along the rocks as she can manage, she kneels down and begins making a clicking sound with her tongue in order to get her rakhtor's attention.

The "clicking" sounds are inaudible even to Elise's own ears, at first, and forcing her to increase her intended volume several times before the rakhtor stops its scratching at the ground. College-trained and accustomed to various oddities, the bird flutters its wings and hops over to the Gallah's rock, where it waits patiently while she mounts, though the feathers on its neck ruffle up and down as she settles against its bare back. The canine steers it with a slap of her hand against the side of its neck – inaudible, but felt by the bird, which turns, and runs several yards across the snow to build up speed before soaring into the air, headed for Mount Rephath.

As directed, Missy keeps herself low against the rakhtor's back as it flies, all the better to hide her against those that might look to the night sky. In her mind she makes the sign of the Star and Anchor, both for the missing Stalker, and for herself. Mount Rephath is home to the vengeance-seeking priestesses, the Yodhrephath, and she wonders for a moment if her name might be somewhere upon their list. The thought is merely curiosity, for she has no love of the priestesses, and conflict with the Eeee seems to be an ongoing trial, and one she has grown well accustomed to. With subtle nudges and pats, she directs her mount onward to the sacred mountain of the Goddess Rephath in search of the landing site directed to her in planning.

The rakhtor begins to circle not far from the site of the ruined shrine of Diphath, as if searching for a place to feed. Moments later it flutters down to land at the edge of the old temple near the edge of the cliff and not far fromthe tree-line. There its rider hops off, and slips off into the trees to begin tying her rope around a tree and her own waist.

The crust of the snow fractures under her feet as she dismounts, though the spell upon the canine prevents it from making any sound. The bird scratches at the snow desultorily, and wanders over to one of the other trees, as its rider's footprints move a few yards, then stop at a tree beside the cliff while she secures the rope.

Once the rope is secured about herself, and the base of the tree, the hidden Gallah backs away from the tree towards the cliff edge. With the slack held, and the rope gripped,she edges over the cliff side and begins rappelling slowlyalong the cliff side in search of the hidden entrance to the caverns below the shrine. Once home to a dungeon, the caverns now serve to conceal the mages who toil about their schemes within. Her weight now pulling the rope, the rope presses into the snow covered ground, an attempt to conceal part of the rope for the time while she searches.

The rope vanishes beneath the crust of snow, leaving only a shadowed line in the broken snow to mark where it had been, as the Gallah paces herself down the cliff, moving with the glacial slowness advocated by the shadow mages, for maximum effectiveness of the invisibility spell. Fortunately, according to Stalker's instructions, the opening in the cliff that leads to the dungeons should be only about six feet down.

Unfortunately, six feet down, she finds no opening. After feeling carefully at the many nooks and ledges of the face around her, Elise detects no gaps deeper than a few inches – nothing like the fissure described by her erstwhile partner.

Missy frowns, for this makes entry into the structure difficult indeed. Without the alternate entryway she will be forced to pass over the ward, which she believes can only lead to certain disaster. Unwilling to light a torch lest the glaring light be as a beacon to her activities here, she begins pulling herself back up, searching when she need pause for matters of stealth.

As she creeps back up, her fingers run again over ground previously covered, and she notes that one spot is oddly smooth – definitely not an opening, but out of place with the rough texture of the rest of the rest of the cliff face.

The strange length of cliff gives Missy reason to pause, and after considering it a second, she shifts herself along the cliff to the side of the oddity.

Nothing covers this section – no loose dirt or clinging ice – and as Elise maps it out with her fingers, she finds regular, straight indentations in the area, suggesting that what she senses are bricks, and not a natural formation. They cover a small section of the cliff, less than two feet high and a little over a foot wide … about the size of the opening Stalker had used.

Have we been discovered … ? Pondering this, Missy drops her shoulder against the cliff side and after a bit of maneuvering, places an ear against the bricks that she might hear if anyone resides beyond them.

If anything stirs inside, the canine cannot hear it through the bricks. A cold wind blows over the mountainside, silently stirring at the hood of her cloak.

Again the Gallah frowns, and because she cannot risk there being someone past the stones, she abandons the bricked up entryway in favor of another means to enter. Thus she hauls herself back up the cliff and decides to locate her mount whom she needs to attempt on an alternate plan of entry.

Now more practiced at the art of making clicks loud enough to get the bird's attention, Elise soon has the animal hopping back to her side, and she slips back onto its back.

Once up, Missy ponders over her plans, and means of entry, and finds the situation steadily looking more grim by the moment. She abandons the idea she had for the rakhtor and instead moves the bird to wander across the center structure so she might get a better look at the area and the path down and around the stairs.

At her direction, the rakhtor strays along, pecking at the ground in a natural, unhurried manner, while its rider scans the surrounding star-lit shrine. As they near the staircase, the sound of a muffled Eeee voice breaks the silence, muttering something unintelligible.

Missy perks an ear as she hears Eeee speaking, not expecting voices this close to the main exit. She directs the rakhtor's slow progress so that it will near the stairs where she might listen all the better.

Once she's a few feet from the stairs, the invisible canine can make out the Eeee's words. " – akat take this cold!" he curses, and she hears an accompanying stamping of feet. "I need a cup of hot tea. What's keeping Karo anyway?"

Now that she can listen, she nudges her rakhtor to begin moving around the local area. In this way she can prevent it from simply standing there and thus appearing rather conspicuous, and allow for continued listening. She considers that she might lure the Eeee away from the door and slay them elsewhere so that she might search them for something that may provide proof against the ward. Or, perhaps, she considers waiting for this Karo to see if he might provide something more suitable.

From the sound of his voice, the Eeee stands at the bottom of the stairwell, and from the sound of his ranting, he is not an especially observant guard. "Rot that Karo, anyway,he's probably cozying up in front of the fire with Annatania when he's supposed to be coming out here and standing in the miserable wind instead of me!" Not that Gripey is actually standing in the wind himself, as his position in the stairwell shelters him. But from the sounds of his boots against the steps, he's about to change that.

With a sharp pat, the ex-Gallee nudges her mount to chirp, then directs it to begin wandering off towards one of the damaged walls.

"What was – !" The Eeee unsnaps his wings and leaps out of the stairwell, scanning the direction of the chirp with sonar clicks. "Oh, rot you," he says after a moment. "What the drek is a rakhtor doing wandering loose around here? G'wan, git!" he yells at it, landing at the top of the stairs.

Missy just pats the rakhtor to walk over to the wall, then around behind it, so that it seems to not hear the Eeee. Or simply be ignoring him. Once behind the wall, the Gallah pats the bird to keep walking off past into the open area beyond, while the canine herself shifts to roll off the bird and drop behind the wall to lay quietly, waiting for the Eeee to pass by after the bird.

Gripey doesn't pursue the bird; instead, he leans over to grab a small rock and hurl it in the rakhtor's general direction. He repeats, "Git!" while missing the bird by several feet.

A second Eeee voice calls out, "You got something up there, Zaoth?" from the stairs.

After drawing her dagger behind the cover of the wall, slowly Missy rises to her feet and plants her foot in the claw print left by the rakhtor's passage. With steady and almost painfully slow steps the canine makes her way back to the stairwell, using the magicks upon her to hide her approach, and the footsteps of the bird to cover her tracks. Her dagger rests ready in her right hand and she begins sizing the man up as she approaches him, thinking where best to strike him so that he might die silently.

The slow pace needed to let the spell hide her from Eeee sonar is not conducive to deadly intent, and Zaoth has ample time to converse with his relief as the faux mercenary makes her way to him. "There's a bloody rakhtor up here!" he calls back to Karo.

"What, a mount? Is somebody here?" The second Eeee wings into view.

"Naw, it's wild, or at least it got loose if it's not. No tack on it," Zaoth replies. The rakhtor, unguided by Elise, has hopped another several yards away from the two bats.

The mercenary sets her jaw as she listens to the two discuss the matter of her mount being present. That they seem to believe it is wild is a comfort, and again she focuses on moving ever forward. The time it takes her to approach leaves her moment enough to consider how many times she has been needed to stand against an Eeee, and wonders for a moment when it became almost … usual. She quickly dismisses the thought, there's no time for such things now.

"Well, leave it be," Karo says. "If you want to get back inside, you'd better go. The ward's only down for five minutes." The new bat folds his wings around his body, the clawed joints at their tops clutching the cloak he pulls simultaneously about him, while he surveys the apparently empty shrine attentively.

Missy hears their words, and decides on a change of plans. Five minutes. She decides to leave the bat alive, since there now is no need to kill him. And since the ward will not be down forever, she makes her way towards the stairwell instead, leaving him be but keeping a careful eye on him in case his return to the stairwell might connect with her approach.

"Five minutes is plenty of time," Zaoth says, grinning at his compatriot as the Gallah draws up to the stairwell.

"Heh, sure beats thirty seconds. I can't believe you finally got them to cave on that point," Karo replies with an answering grin.

No longer having the rakhtor's footprints to follow, Missy switches to using the guard's instead. She places her feet where his once passed, using his own imprints to hide her path forward and down the stairs.

"Yeah, well, after the second time stuck out here because the relief took too long getting through, I'd had enough. If they're so proud of that bloody ward, why do they need us out here, anyway?" Notwithstanding his insistence on there being plenty of time, he starts back down the stairs just as Missy reaches the top of the stairwell, which is clear of snow.

Missy edges out of the way to allow the guard to enter before her. There she waits for him to pass so that she might follow him in, observing his path inside in case there might be any special trick to crossing the ward.

Zaoth brushes past the Gallah, oblivious to her presence, and opens the door. Beyond lies a hallway with runes on the walls, and gravel, gray and white, laid out in a checkerboard pattern, each "checker" about one foot square. As Missy watches him closely, she notes that he steps only on the gray sections, and that he hits each one exactly once with his feet.

Moving with the man like an exceedingly slow shadow, the hidden mercenary makes her way after him, and once inside, proceeds to attempt to copy his exact movement through the ward. Her slow pace might well make such an act difficult, but she finds she has little choice in the matter.

Unlike the Eeee ahead of her, Missy's feet make no sound on the gravel. If her mimicry of his footsteps lacks something, she cannot tell – no alarm sounds to her ears, and Zaoth seems untroubled. The canine is roughly a quarter of the way across the corridor when the bat reaches the far side and opens the opposite door.

Without breaking pace, Missy continues across the checkerboard surface of the ward. Ever careful to stand on the correct square and keep herself moving slow, lest one mistake of movement destroy her cover. As she continues, she watches the man depart, just in case there might be more to the ward than the symbols here.

The Eeee steps through the door, and the poodle notices that he touches his hand to a rune just outside the corridor as he does so. Then he clicks the door shut behind him.

Missy quirks when the door locks, and doesn't ponder what to do about it until she has cleared the checkerboard ward. Once across, she decides she'll need to wait, and to this end she presses herself up against the wall near the door where she might be out of the way, and holds there until again someone passes through.

Time trickles past as she waits, leaning against the wall, though with no timepiece to measure it by, she cannot be sure how much. Then, abruptly, she feels a tingle along her spine, as if the hallway had suddenly become charged with some unseen, unfelt force, though she hears no sound and feels no discomfort.

The Gallah forces herself to remain still, very very still. Despite discomfort, no matter how much her legs may ache as she waits, she tries to be still. If the ward has activated, she has no desire to move and trigger it. So she stays as she is, remaining fast in place.

If the time seemed to move slowly before, now it may well have stopped entirely. Nothing stirs in the gravel-tiled room as the disguised poodle leans against the wall, a small part of her grateful that at least she had not chosen to crouch or stand unsupported when she stopped to wait for the door to be re-opened. Time, presumably, passes. She hears voices beyond the doorway, but they pass without coming close enough for her to make out what they're saying. Her right leg cramps. She ignores it.

Missy had no idea just how painful an unattended cramp could become, but she becomes increasingly intimate with the reality. She doesn't even move enough to clench her jaw as she waits. At last, the door opens, and Zaoth steps through, grumbling under his breath.

The bat yawns in between grumbles, stepping onto the gray gravel carefully, then reaches back with one hand to close the still-open door.

Deciding she'd rather not come to know better the ache of a leg cramp and endure another small eternity in the hallway, Missy moves to act. She favors the leg that didn't cramp when she steps and hastily tries to duck low and under than man's arm to the hallway beyond the door.

The Eeee doesn't even notice the faint blur of motion as Elise dips below him and exits. The door clicks shut behind her, leaving the poodle alone in a corridor. The area is absolutely black, but the Gallah scarcely notices, hunched over her leg as she is.

Missy allows herself time to kneel, and there, let her cramp subside before she moves on. She perks her ear to listen as she recovers, hoping her own hearing is sufficient.

Straining her ears, she catches the squeaking of Eeee voices down the corridor, but it doesn't sound like chanting to her ears.

As the ache leaves her, Missy pushes herself back up to her feet and prepares to move on. Though she cannot see in the darkness, she moves forward regardless. The wall provides a guide, her feet search for obstructions that may trip her, and her ears listen for the sounds of beings moving in the darkness. Like before, she is slow and methodical in her steps.

After groping at the walls for a bit, Elise ascertains that she stands in a narrow corridor leading north and south. Mentally checking her bearings, she chooses to walk south.

As her hand trails against the east wall, she soon encounters a dip in it – made by a closed door.

Upon finding the door, Missy shifts to lean against it, placing her ear to the frame to listen if there might be someone within.

At first she thinks she hears chanting – but a moment later, she identifies the words as a Babelite folk-song, sung slightly off-key by a high-pitched Eeee voice. Occasional clinking sounds, as of ceramic, accompany the tune.

The invisible Gallah decides to move on and passes the door up, continuing southward with her hand on the east wall. From Stalker's small map, she determines she must be somewhere west of the ritual now and if she continues south she might reach the corridor east on his map, at which point she could use the map he provided to find her way.

Just a few more feet past the first door, she comes to a second.

Here again, Missy leans to listen to the door, trying to ascertain if the room or hallway beyond is occupied and if so, by whom.

Like the other, this door is closed, and at first as she leans against it, she hears nothing. The Gallah pauses a moment longer, and then hears a faint, rhythmic sound, high-pitched and almost squeaky.

Unable to quite determine what lies beyond this particular door the Gallah, remains where she is. She considers it may well be the ritual, but notes that it sounds like a single chanter, if that is what it is. Regardless, she must find out and so remains to listen a bit longer.

At least she can hear no noise from herself, not even her own breath, to interfere with the task of listening. After a few moments, she can make out at least two distinct strains, though only their highest-pitched sounds carry through the door.

The Gallah finds that this may indeed be the way to the ritual, if not the door to the chamber itself. Slowly and carefully she begins to open the door. As she recalls the field of effect covers items she possesses near her, she presses up against the door near the hinges as she begins to open it.

The door swings silently open into another corridor. The muffled chanting becomes audible now, and the Gallah blinks her eyes reflexively as a wisp of candlelight is now visible, illuminating a barred grill on a door at the far end of the new corridor.

Breathing a silent sigh of relief at finally finding her destination, Missy wastes no time in continuing into the hallway, carefully pushing the door behind her so it's almost closed in case she need escape through it quickly. Once she begins down the hall, she bobs her head around to try and use that light source to determine if anything stands between her and that door as she approaches it.

It appears that the corridor is empty, save for the Gallah, and she soon finds herself at far door, gazing through the grill at what would appear to be her goal.

May the First Ones guide my hand; I shall surely need it now. After the moment of prayer, Missy signs the Star and Anchor across her chest, and then leans in closer to the grill to get a better look at what fills the room. She especially searches for obstructions or guards that might also be present within.

After blinking a few more times to adjust her vision to the light, the former poodle manages to make out some of the shapes outside the circle – in particular, an Eeee silhouette resting against the frame at one of the doors – the one leading out from the southwest corner. That would be the door Stalker watched through. He had not mentioned a guard on that door, though he would not have been able to see it from his perspective, and using sonar would have given away even his shadow-hidden form. Now that Elise thinks about it, she recalls him mentioning a guard on the door she now stands at.

Considering that there may indeed be a guard present at her own door, carefully, Missy tries to find him or her. She presses carefully to the door and glances around its perimeter to attempt to find the guard and see if he's actually leaning against her door, or just near it.

After some jiggling around to peer through the grill, she finally spots the guard, leaning against the wall to the left of the door, watching the mages with bright, alert eyes, his ears pricked. The rest of the room matches Stalker's description – some instruments of torture hinting at the room's former purpose, many of them unidentifiable, and an x-shaped wooden frame against the south wall, with black iron bands that hold … a person on it. At first her eyes glance past the motionless, bound figure, seeing the body as part of the frame in the bad light, but then she realizes there's actually a small, thin humanoid form on it.

Flicking her eyes back to the person held to the wall to get a better look, the hidden woman bites her lip. A prisoner … no, a undoubtedly a sacrifice, she thinks. She attempts to see if the figure is still even alive, given the guessed at contents of the silver bowl.

In the poor light, it's impossible to say. The canine can only guess that the figure is an Aelfin, by the small size, and can't even tell what gender. A stained tunic drapes over the torso and upper thighs, while the chin hangs against the chest.

Having seen as much as she can manage of the Aelfin, the mercenary moves to enter the room. As she has done before, she presses her body against the door and moves it slightly to test for any sounds and to know which way the door does swing.

The door swings open, silently, but the guard next to it jumps just the same, turning to look directly at the door. "Who's there?" he barks.

Missy leaves the door alone, and instead presses herself against the wall opposite the way the door swung open. There she waits, invisible, to see if the guard wanders into the hallway to find what caused the door to open.

"Who's there?" The Eeee loosens his sword in its sheath, making clicking noises.

"Oh, for Inala's sake, Azto, it's just Annatania stirring you up again. We need to teach that dratted girl a lesson," the guard at the other door grumbles, not leaving his post.

"I'm sure she's learned after the last time," Azto snaps back, though not entirely with confidence. He prods the door with the tip of his sword, pushing it the rest of the way open.

Missy uses this chance to edge into the room, dagger slowly lifted as she creeps with her back against the doorframe into the room. Though trying to maintain her invisibility, she readies herself for the worst – either to parry the guard's blade or kill him outright.

Azto stares at the corridor beyond the door, and doesn't appear to see her. Instead of turning to attack the Gallah, he takes a few steps into the corridor she just exited from, saying, "Annatania? If this is another of your pranks… "

With the man exiting as he is, the Gallah pushes herself as much as she is able against the frame and continues to move on inside and against the left wall.

The Eeee guard continues down the corridor, growling under his breath as he reaches the far end of it. "I swear I will… " His next words are lost to Missy as she finishes edging into the room.

Missy's goal is clear now that she's inside the room: reach the magic circle and place the disrupter device within its confines. There, when the time comes, it will trigger and destroy this ritual. To this end, she slowly begins a switch of equipment. The dagger is sheathed, her sword is drawn, and her left hand digs out the disrupter, each action carefully regulated so as to keep her invisibility functioning.

By now, it seems almost normal to the canine to move at a pace that even a slug would find tedious – like maximizing one's speed, in reverse, every movement wholly focused and precise as she creeps through it. She finds the trance-like elegance of it disturbed when she takes the bare disrupter from the pouch and into her hand. Where earlier, the object had felt like nothing – almost no sensation to holding it, at all – now it feels faintly warm. Fyiara had warned her that the disrupter would heat up as it grew close to the trigger time.

Delaying no further, Missy creeps towards the circle, sword raised to strike in case that becomes necessary. She makes her way closer and determines where the three mages stand, and the best way to approach them so she can put the item at the foot of the dais.

The mages stand like points on a triangle, equal distances apart. As the two Eeee are smaller than their Naga fellow, reaching between them seems a simple enough matter. The Gallah's hand is stretched out, with the disrupter in it, to place it in the circle, when Azto returns. "Annatania says it wasn't her," the Eeee says, his voice clipped.

The other guard guffaws. "Annatania always says it wasn't her."

Azto's eyes search the room, narrowed, skeptical. "No. This is different. You know what a bad liar Anna is. This time I think she really meant it. I'm going to wake Master Sudi." He strides purposefully towards one of the northern cell doors.

The Gallah continues forward. Even if her presence was announced, she does not believe the mages would be quick to react, even if she is beside them. Recalling Cyprian and his chants, and what she knows of magic, she does not believe they'll easily end their chanting even with an intruder. The disrupter must reach the circle.

The second guard blanches. "Azto, don't do that. You know what he's like after a false alarm."

The other Eeee shakes his head, pulling the door open. "Better that than to ignore a real alarm," he says.

With careful precision and a regulated fear that begins to build as the guard leaves the room, Missy lowers to kneel beside the pedestal. Her hand reaches out with the disrupter that seems to burn in her very grasp, feeling as though it may ignite at any second. Finally, after so much maneuvering, the disrupter reaches the floor and there it rests, silently and invisibly charging towards what threatens to be a massive magical effect. The hidden woman draws back, sword ready, and glances from the Aelfin prisoner to those that remain in the room, preparing to engage those that will soon know of her deeds here.