The Forgotten Zodiac

Dagan nodded immediately and stepped past Brutis to get down the stairs. At the bottom, he glanced up at Vi, somewhat nervous about leaving her alone, though he knew she could handle herself. Quickly, he refocused his attentions on Morgan and waited for instructions of some sort. "Are we going inside or what?"

"We are. But...we're going to have to be careful. We're going to have to be sneaky." Morgan felt both hands along the door, careful not to let Dagan see the palm of his left. "This is a popular Protestant hideout. There'll be too many of them to fight, so we have to be careful and quiet. Especially once we reach Alexander." He closed his eyes and felt along the wall, moving away from the door. "There are guards...Alexander is in the basement. Stairs are on the other side of the house from here, but this is the only entrance. The front door is blocked off from the inside." He sighed, then lowered his voice. "We just missed the guard tradeoff for this door. There's only one..."

He knocked. The peephole fastened to the door, to check who was outside, quickly became the very thing that killed the guard on the other side. Supposedly. Morgan slipped the glove back on his left hand and fiddled with the door, unlocking it easily and pushing it open silently. He motioned for Dagan to follow.

((I'll assume Alexander is partially conscious only.))

Dagan did follow, slipping in behind the door and closing it firmly, but silently, behind them. As nice as it would be to have an open exit, an open door was likely to draw attention because of the light and noise it created, which both men knew. Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the house, Lowell quickly navigated his way through the rooms. His job required stealthy movement more frequently than one would imagine, and his high moral standards were helpless to prevent it. For the most part, he was able to avoid any guards. Those he couldn't avoid, Morgan took care of, which was fortuanate. Dagan's methods of offense were less than subtle.

((Yuss. Waking up.))

Morgan's method of 'taking care of things' was either snapping their necks or forcing them to see what they didn't want to. Each time he downed someone, he pulled them back and out of sight, which worked well enough. By the time they reached the stairs, no one was any the wiser about the intruders, although some were questioning the whereabouts of the missing guards.

Morgan motioned for Dagan to follow his descent down the stairs, which led to a single door. Without much thought as to what would be past it, he opened the door. It was a bad idea, in retrospect. Not thinking about what could be waiting for them behind the door was a mistake, and a bad one.

None other than one of the drunkards that had attacked Alexander a few weeks ago stood there with an odd looking tool in his hands. With a booming crack like a firework, Morgan spun and staggered back, blood splashing the floor in flows from his shoulder, slipping between the fingers of his right hand."Heh. Like it, magic-man? It's called a rifle. We've been working on it for months now. You just happened to taste the first funcioning prototype." Bloke grinned, then raised the machine again at Dagan. "Dunno who you are, but if you came with him, you'd be smart to put your hands where I can see 'em and sit down. Unless you want to end up like him."

Alexander was in a chair at the back of the room, hands and feet tied securely to the chair and face bloodied a fair amount. Unlike Morgan, he did not appear to be seriously hurt, though it would be an incredible headache when he awoke. The gunshot had stirred the unconscious noble, and he was just now trying to open his eyes, which was difficult, due to the blood that had run down his face before drying. Other than the beating his face had taken, the noble appeared to be in fairly good condition. From the angle and location of the cuts, it looked as if he had been tied into the chair before someone, quite possible Bloke, had decided to do him harm.
Dagan slowly entered the room fully, hands raised in the air. He sat down slowly as well, squatting on the stone floor before lowering himself. It wasn't merely the slow speed he was trying to accomplish. His pockets, which he notoriously forgot to button, contained the same wyvern scales and phoenix down as he'd used against the bandits, as well as his other supplies. If he was able to slide them out of his pockets, he might be able to destroy Bloke's prototype before he killed someone with it. If he hadn't already.

"C'mon, you stupid man," Bloke ordered Morgan into the room.

"You were supposed to shoot him in the chest, not the shoulder," A familiar female voice sounded from the side. She was getting something from a drawer, but she turned to face Morgan and Dagan with a smile on her face. As Morgan had suspected, it was Moria. "Hello there, you two. Fancy a cup of tea? Oh no...you wouldn't. That thing you feel in your shoulder is called a bullet, Morgan. Good luck getting it out. Looks to me like it took out that left hand of yours," She eyed his arm curiously, frowning slightly. Morgan didn't reply, nothing but a feirce look on his face.

Without warning, he threw out his wires. They wrapped around the gun, and Morgan was quick to send an electric shock into Bloke, attempting to force him to drop the weapon. But it backfired; he let out a pained cry as much as Bloke did, and both of them collapsed. The gun clattered to the ground, and so did Morgan's wires.

"I thought you were smarter than this," Moria observed, smiling curtly still. Morgan hadn't moved more than that due to the knife she was holding against Alexander's throat. "The bullet is metal, you idiot. With it in your shoulder, it's impossible to divert all the electricity into those wires. You draw it straight from the ground and pass it harmlessly through your body and into the metal wires. But when the metal is inside you, there's no way you can keep it from hurting you as much as you hurt anyone else." She eyed the burns on Bloke's hands. "And you're already quite hurt, aren't you?"

Morgan snorted a bit. "I...cauterized the wound...from the inside." 

"Oh? Hm. Well, you won't bleed to death, then. More fun for me." She held up what she had gotten from the drawer. "This is...something I've personally developed. A brutal venom that essentially turns blood into cement. How long do you think Alexander's heart will hold out against it, two minutes? Maybe one and a half..." She lowered the needle towards the Nobleman's chest, smirking. "But maybe you can stop it. Dagan Lowell...I want you to kill Morgan."

Alexander's eyes opened as Moria lowered the needle, eye lashes finally breaking clear of the dried blood. The boy let out a groan of pain, barely aware beyond the extreme pounding in his head, and the itching caused by the blood drying on his face. As he awoke more and more, he groaned again and pulled against the ropes typing his arms to the chair. The noble licked his lips, not that it did much good with how dry his mouth was. "Where the... Where the hell is this?" His vision adjusted better to the dim lighting of the room and he perceived Morgan and Dagan against the far wall, as well as the blood coating Morgan's shirt. "Crap."
Dagan stood, closing his hands around something Moria couldn't see. He turned, as if he had the intention of attacking Morgan, but flicked a small, triangular shape toward the wall behind Moria. An activated wyvern scale. Before she had time to react, he also hurled one at Bloke and one at the ceiling behind them all, hoping to collapse that part of the house. It was a pretty good explosion, after all.

That certainly worked. Not the best of ideas, considering it was in the basement, but it worked. Morgan found himself buried under the rubble of the collapsed ceiling, struggling to maintain conciousness and hearing. It was difficult, especially the latter. His ears were ringing horribly. He could only wonder what kind of damage he sustained, if any. He felt...numb.

When the weight was relieved from his back, he twisted himself around and looked up. Vi was there, as was Brutis. The Wyvern grabbed the spellbound man by the middle in its jaws, heaving him up. "Let's go, Brutis, get out of here!" She ordered. The other Protestants were too busy attempting to save Moria and Bloke to do anything. Vi already had Alexander on Brutis' back with her, and Dagan was right behind her. All relatively unharmed, thankfully.

Morgan passed out in Brutis' jaws as they leapt free of the building and out into the street.

It was midafternoon, the next day, when Alexander found his way into Morgan's room. The noble's injuries had been relatively light, and Dagan had enough unicorn horn that everyone had recovered from their respective scratches and bruises quite quickly. With the exception of Morgan.
As the gun was such a new weapon, no one was quite sure how to deal with the injury it left. With pliers and a multitude of knives, Doctor Monet had been able to remove the bullet from Morgan's shoulder. Then, to deal with the hole in Morgan's shoulder, they had taken slivers of unicorn horn and pieces of phoenix down and filled the hole with them, to assist the healing. Finally, his shoulder had been bandaged carefully. All this was done with Morgan's glove on, to the great confusion of the doctor's assistants, who kept trying to remove it to completely inspect the wound area.
The teen broke off his internal recounting of Morgan's treatment, for he had insisted on watching it all himself, and knocked on the door to the room. "Morgan? Are you awake yet?" He inquired, opening the door a crack to hear any response his guard gave.

There was silence for a long moment, then an uttered, "Yes," From the man propped up in bed. He closed the book he had been reading, setting it aside. His arm looked normal again; he had since placed the neccissary spells to make it seem so. But according to doctor Monet, he would be unable to move it for about a week as the bones repaired themselves. He'd wear a sling as soon as he was well enough to sit up. As it was, he was still recovering from the surgery, and was resultingly on medication for pain.

He seemed awake enough, though. Most medications, the rather effective methods, made people act like drunkards. But Morgan was either a very calm drunk, or not feeling said adverse effects. "Alexander. Come on inside. I...owe you an apology. I was taking personal time to run errands when I should have been at your side. Had I been more observant, I would have taken heed of Moria's odd behavior yesterday morning and taken action. I knew she was up to something the first day I met her, but I didn't expect she would be a protestant spy..."

"What?" Alexander dismissed Morgan's apology with a wave of his hand. "That's completely ridiculous. I should have fired her weeks ago when you first identified her as a problem. Even if you'd been here, it's not like you can be here constantly. You would have gone to bed and she would have gotten in just as easily."
It wasn't that he was upset over the events of the previous day; however, he was just as much to blame as Morgan. He hadn't fire Moria, despite having not trusted her, out of laziness. The fact that Moria was intelligent to wait till his defenses were down should have been obvious. "The fact that you weren't here when she took action is probably beneficial. She didn't eliminate you on her way out, and you were able to come to my rescue."

"I suppose..." Morgan tutted. "But I still made a mistake, and I paid for it quite dearly." He touched his shoulder, which obviously still hurt quite a lot. "Monet says the hole may not close up. I'll just be stuck with a unicorn-horn and pheonix-feather stuffed hole in my shoulder." He smiled a bit. "Not exactly big enough to conceal a knife, though. Perhaps a poison, in case you ever order the death of someone in a public area..."

Back to joking, then. Morgan would be alright. "Oh, have you looked into getting a new housemaid? Or...were you perhaps considering hiring Virellis for such a position?"

Alexander frowned slightly, though relived and amused by Morgan's comment. "It's good to know whose side you'll be on when I sink to such dastardly levels. No, I haven't yet. I've been fairly busy reassuring fat, stupid, arrogant nobles and making inquires about that machine they used."
His expresion shifted entirely when he mentioned the gun, which was clearly a worrying threat. "How many of those to you expect them to have?" He inquired softly, voice lowering on instict rather than on intentional thought. "Considering what they did with one, I shudder to think what they could do with ten. Or twenty. Or a hundred."
He shook his head and moved back to Morgan's question. "Virellis seems like a perfectly capable canidate. At least I know she won't be kidnapping me any time soon. Why not?"

"That's good. Vi might not have a stellar attitude all the time, but...she's good. Her mind and heart are in the right spots." Morgan sighed. "I got a good look at the components when I fried myself and that gun. Pretty sure I melted a couple of the smaller bits, too. But...it's simple. Surprisingly simple. They can only hold one bullet at a time, but I can think of ways to get around that. I...I doubt melting a couple parts would stop the production for long, unfortunately. Slow it by a day or two, if anything...but it won't be long until protestants all over this city have them. And...all over the country could happen just overnight. I have no doubts the blueprints are already on their way to France and other places. Maybe even those fools in the Americas. Ugh, my shoulder aches just thinking about it," He rubbed his wound, frowning bitterly.

"Moria is still alive, you know..." He leaned over and handed Alexander something. It was a simple note in her handwriting, boasting only three words. 'I'll be back'. "You need to be cautious. If she gets into the kitchens or the tearoom, all it takes is a single drop of cyanide..."

Alexander took the note and read it carefully, more than once. He sighed, deflating visibly as he processed the danger Moria's survival put him in. "Okay. What can we do to neutralize poisons or test for them, assuming Moria is actually going to attempt something? She could target you as well; I think she made it clear how she felt about you yesterday."
He tossed the note back to Morgan and sat back in the chair, still thinking about the guns. There was nothing he could do about it, not know; but no one wanted to be remember forever as the noble under whose watch weapons of mass-destruction entered the world and allowed radical religious groups to conquer the world. "I can't contact the Vatican without getting in all sorts of trouble. Send the information to them in your next letter, will you?"

"Here," Morgan handed Alexander what appeared to be a white liquid of some kind. "A single drop placed on your food or drink will tell if it's poisonous or not. If all is fine, it'll blend in and taste like the food. If the food is poisoned, it'll turn red and solidify. I had this made awhile ago, I'm sure Dagan wouldn't mind making more for us. It's a serum made from unicorn hairs and various other supplies that he has. It'll be an inconvenience...constantly adding it to foods and drinks, but...it's better than dying."

He sighed and nodded. "Of course. I think I'll write up a letter now. Pass me my bag, would you? There's parchment and a quill in there..."

"Thanks." The noble pocketed the liquid carefully, keeping it in a place where it wouldn't break. "Most things are better than dying. Does Dagan know how to make this already?" Alexander inquired, handing over the bag as he did so. "I can get him to make more of this as soon as you think we'll need it." Clearly, the events of the previous day hadn't shaken Alexander's faith in Morgan's intelligence. His guard was still clearly competent; and, mostly, Alexander didn't have the time to rethink everything. "Was there anything else? I should probably get back to letter writing."

"I'll tell him the recipe as soon as I can." Morgan shrugged his one good shoulder. "I'll be able to be up and moving about tomorrow. Try to keep your head down, and remember, if anyone tries to drag you anywhere, yell at the top of your lungs so I can hear, got it?" He smiled a bit, and gave Alexander a pat on the shoulder. "And...if you need to sit down and take a breather, don't push it, okay? Stress and trauma...they don't do good things to your head. They never do."

Alexander nodded slowly and rose, smiling weakly at Morgan. "Yell as loud as I can, breathe deeply, wait for you to recover." He nodded again and went to the door of the room, pausing at the door to address Morgan one last time. "Hey, Morgan. You call if you need something, okay? Anything. It'd make me take whatever breaks you figure are necessary." He nodded to himself again and exited the room, heading toward his room to continue his work. Without eating.

Morgan smiled and went back to his book, but was soon interrupted by Dagan and Vi entering. "Hey," She said softly. "Are you alright? Everything okay? Xander told us you were awake..."

"Xander?" Morgan raised a brow.

"I can't have a pet name for the boy?" Vi smiled a bit. "I like him. He's a good friend."

"Did he thank you for rescuing him?"

"Not yet. But that doesn't even matter." Vi plopped down in the chair. "Brutis' teeth left a few marks in your chest, but I didn't think you'd mind. I...saw Monet dressing your wounds. You...have a lot of scars already..."

"Let's just say the Vatican didn't take too kindly to me at first," Morgan murmured. "My left hand is an abomination to them. Punishment was unavoidable. But once I proved myself to be an asset, they eased up and accepted me into their ranks. Just as I knew they would."

"There's a fine line between punishment and torture," Vi muttered.

"I'm sorry you had to see."

Vi shook her head. "It doesn't matter. Here," She put something in his hand. A necklace. "It's a Siren charm. It should bless your speedy recovery."

"Oh. Well, thank you very much." Morgan smiled happily, putting it on at once. It wasn't much of a charm; a sharp tooth set in a round piece of metal was hardly eye-catching. But Morgan definitely appreciated the gesture. After all, he hated lying around in bed for any amount of time.