Reynate met his eyes, something that he was clearly not used to. Hers burned with a chilling anger. Renaud's seemed to have the energy of a storm brewing - along with the colors, algae laced with lightning. He pursed his lips, and narrowed those eyes, as if appraising a new object.

Reynate spoke first. "You should know who I am. You sent a Mob assassin after us four years ago."

"I send so many," Renaud quipped, gaining a smile to aid his mask of charm. "How could I know you? If I didn't go and do it myself?" His pale eyebrow flickered up, Reynate caught the look and interpreted it - correctly - as a threat.

"Then you need to just look at your handiwork and try hard to remember." Rey swept her hand back, to indicate the Nex and the empty landscape where Istvan had apparently escaped.

"I am afraid that you'll have to be more specific. I only see a Nex which - by the way - cost an immense number of hours and investments to create, dead at the hands of your Draks."

"What?!" Rey suddenly broke out of her professional mode, her mistake. Renaud turned a casual facade on, and walked toward the Nex. To do so, he passed Alex, who backed up a couple steps and avoided the man's gaze at all costs.

Renaud investigated the remains, his eyes carefully following what little trail Istvan's feet left in the dusty gravel. He straightened up and glared at the Draks.

"You two are certainly not welcome on my property. I suggest you leave." He said to them, but neither of them moved to fly away, as if they were either ignoring him or pretending they didn't understand his words. He turned away from them, disgusted. It was clear that he didn't much care for Draks. Or women, by the way he looked at Reynate.

But he approached her again, and lifted his hand to the air, "Please, forgive any initial confusion or hostility. I am Professor Julian Renaud, and this is my Institute. Would you care to come in and talk about why you are here? It's hardly fitting for such a well-mannered woman and her companion to stand out here in the dust when there is wine and comfortable seating inside."

While she certainly did not trust anything this man said or did to be truthful, Reynate had in fact been brought up to accept hospitality when it was offered. She turned to Alex and indicated he come along, but the moment that Renaud's hand casually met her shoulder to escort her inside, something else interrupted everything.

A blur of brown, slate and black, hissing through the air like an arrow. Istvan flew past them, carrying Renaud several feet away with a tremendous blow. He regained his feet before the older man could even register what had happened, as Reynate spun around with the impact - untouched.

"You stay the hell away from her, beast," Istvan snarled. He was so feral, crouched like an animal himself, his eyes wide but black.

Reynate realized long before Istvan did, that that had been a mistake. If he'd merely blown through to start a fight that would be one thing. But he'd given away information - that Rey and Alex were precious to him.

Rey figured this a little too late, and as she started to back away from the scene Renaud lept to his feet and grappled his arms (thick, muscled and dappled with heavy blond hair) around her body and neck.

"Come and take her, Van," Renaud chided. "Come along. You killed another one. You know how expensive they are. They cost more than you. You'll owe me more than you do already, for that one."

"I owe you nothing," Istvan said, but his head had dipped down, in a posture that Rey interpreted as fear. His eyes remained burning and fixed on Renaud, however. His body was frozen in place.

"What have you done to him," Rey spat, before Renaud covered her mouth with his powerful hand.

"Do not speak, bitch," Renaud warned. His distaste at actually having to touch a female was eminently clear. "Do so again and I'll snap your neck."

Reynate believed him. Her heart was pounding.

What she did not know was that Istvan could hear it pouding in her chest. He could hear the slight sounds she still made, little throaty fear-induced noises.

Beyond her and Renaud, Alex stood looking helpless. He was far from a coward, but there was something extremely frightening about this Julian Renaud, something that he could tell was the same thing that had preyed upon his friend Istvan for the last five years. Renaud was a monster. A beautiful, blond, monster.

"Let go of my sister," Alex finally stated, "Or I'll ask these Draks to rip your head off and throw you in the sea."

Distracted momentarily by this intrusive whine, Renaud turned to look behind him - all to the effect of allowing Istvan to leap again. From his perch slightly below the pair, Istvan sprang into the air and gripped Renaud's wrists, wrenching both of them off of Reynate and over his head. That done, he began to strike at Renaud with deadly, accurate hands.

And each time he struck, his hand was batted away by Renaud's. Blow for blow - matched evenly in speed and strength. They fought too quickly for the pair of siblings to follow. Were they landing blows or just slapping each other's hands away at every opportunity?

Alex grasped at his sister and hugged her to him, pulling them both away from this. Their friend had been replaced by ... what?

A fierce battle brought attention to itself, as Istvan and Julian fought. They were silent, but their blows and scuffling on the loose gravel still carried over the sound of the distant waves below. At last, Istvan and Renaud's hands clasped, and they literally stood at a standstill gripping on to one another. Blood streamed from each hand, and it was plain that Istvan wasn't holding back using those long, black nails of his. His hands were already bloodied from the Nex carcass, so it was hard to say how much of the red on his hands was his, or Renaud's, or the Nex's.

They did not move when the black doors to the building opened again, and the Nex was framed by two small, young boys. One of them gasped, but the other held his tongue. "Come away," he said, his voice was airy, breathy ... spooky. The pair of men broke apart, almost as though the Draks had pulled them, and stood panting and bloody, glaring at one another.

Without turning his storm-cloud eyes at the boy, Renaud said, "come here," and the boy obeyed immediately. Istvan straightened and snarled.

"Using the child as a shield will only last so long, Julian," Istvan said, very darkly. "I'll not come back in with you this time. I have better things to do with my time than perform for you."

"Then you had best bring your little friends with you, and pray I don't find you again." Renaud warned, and kept the child between himself and Istvan while he walked back to the building.

Alexander noticed with a grim tightness in his throat that the pair of boys ... could have been Istvan when he was a child. Olive skin, black hair, and blue eyes which shone over their strangely sallow faces. The child which had come to Renaud's side had dark grey eye-whites, the other's were still light, but obviously both of them were serving their purpose to the blond man's needs. Alexander wanted to vomit.

Istvan stood before his old friends, unable to move. He started trembling, and glanced around as if there were eyes upon him other than the two humans and the two Draks. He wanted to hide.

"There iss a sstream, ssome wayss into the Territory," Said the Fire Drak. He nudged at Reynate and the young woman stepped forward to see if Istvan would flinch or run. He did flinch, but he stood his ground.

"Let's get you cleaned up, Van. The Draks will keep us safe." She said, and though it took another ten minutes of silent waiting, he finally moved toward the draks. He clearly did not want anyone touching him, but Alexander realized that it was because Istvan thought he was (and justifiably so) filthy. He'd been cut several times, but more had some scrapes on his back and arms from where he'd spun on the ground and had some gravel stuck in his skin. His feet were bloody, though there were callouses on the soles of his feet they were no match for sprinting along grit and sharp gravel. Obviously, the terrain had been well designed.

The Drak offered his leg out, and Istvan stared at it blankly. Reynate sighed, tisked her tongue and said, "silly, we aren't going to walk all that way over this ground. He wants you to get on his back."

"I ... can't do that-" Istvan said, quietly and with worry in his eyes. "They -"

"They are safe," Alexander supplied, "they brought us here. They're riderless, but they're part of an Armada."

"The Net of Wingss armada," The Mud drak said. "We help you humanss communicate."

"Well we don't have voices that carry as far as yours," Rey said, smiling and attempting to pass everything off more casually. It seemed to have a very slight effect. The Fire drak put his neck down, and at last Istvan accepted the leg up. It was obviously distressing to him, but Rey climbed up behind him. She held on to him tightly - but she felt that he was stiff because he didn't want to fall.

"It iss jusst nearby..." The Drak said, and they sprang back into the air after Alex had gotten onto his attendant Drak. They were only in the air with still wings for a moment, then they began flapping the foursome of wings. The humming of their wings brought them over to the eastern edge of the plains in a short time, and only a few minutes after that, they were nearer to human habitation.

"This is nearby?" Istvan shrieked, clutching on to the Drak's body tightly with his strong, runners' legs, and even more tightly with his white-knuckled fingers.

"I'd think you would want to be as far as you could away from that place," Rey said, a whisper. He heard her clearly, over the wind and over the gigantic humming noise that the wings behind him made. The noise was loud to him, no one else.

With an excruciating expression, Istvan turned to look at Rey. The tears in his eyes were whipped away, but the pain remained. His thin lips were so used to ... what, frowning. Screaming? Certainly not smiling, and not even Rey could resist being brought to tears by his face.

"You've come for me," he cried, "I didn't think you even cared any more..."

When the draks landed, it was near a hilly, pleasant lanscape of lush grasses and Racers which grazed upon them. Several Draks also circled, of different breeds - some had horns, like the Lav'intay, others had short ones, yet further had none. None of them held any interest for the trio of humans, for more than a brief moment of recognition that they were there.

To Alex and Rey, the presence of the Draks circling over head meant security and the knowledge that they could shout and have a quick rescue if need be.

To Istvan, the Draks were clearly a source of deep distress. When they landed, he sprang off the Fire's back, and looked as though he was going to just start running and not stop. But he paused, and turned, and looked like he wanted to help Rey off the drak. She needed no such help, of course, and when he took a look at his bloody, hair, gravel and spittle covered hands, Istvan let them drop to his sides.Too vain, still, to wipe them on his pants, Alex noticed.

"There's the stream," Reynate said, and started walking toward it. The draks were already lounging on the grasses, watching their bretherin in the air.

Istvan silently walked with the siblings, taller than both by more than half a head. Yet his head was bowed, he didn't look like he was particularly proud of himself. He knelt down, and pushed his hands and arms into the chill water. Clumps of drak hair, Renaud's hair and skin, gravel, blood and Nex parts all fell away into the water. The Draks had wisely chosen to place them downstream from the village nearby, rather than upstream.

Istvan's dark skin gleamed in the sun, and he tossed his head down into the water, cleaning his hair off. His suede pants wouldn't do to be wet, but he clearly didn't feel like removing them just now. Alexander looked at his friend with an eye for details. What he saw was a lean, jumpy, feral young man that he barely recognized.

He also saw two long marks across his back, older than the fresh scrapes which Istvan dabbed water over. With his long arms, it seemed that Istvan could reach easily pretty much everywhere that had a cut or scrape. Fresh gouges in his side matched Renaud's finger spans, but the two long marks looked more like... Whip marks?

"When did he give you those?" Alex said, gazing down at Istvan's back. Istvan turned, peered over his own shoulder absently.

Blinking, his face turned a little cold, but not for the obvious reason. "Yesterday," he said, finally. Alex and Rey looked at one another, surprised. The marks looked mostly healed - and deep. They looked to be at least a week or perhaps even a month old, not just a day.

Their silence brought words to Istvan's tongue. He stared at the water before him, without lifting his head. "Yesterday. The day before. Last week. Last fortnight. A month ago. Two. When hasn't he given me them? You'd never know. They heal really quickly." He spat out the last, an indication that he didn't want to speak about it. "You wouldn't know that a month ago he broke my wrist. Or last year he stomped on my hip so hard it broke. I don't limp." He continued to stare at the water, as it ran over his hands. "He's given me so much. A deep, deep understanding of anatomy. The opportunity to add to it with machinery - I declined on that one. I didn't much need a sawblade for an arm."

Reynate's gasp finally made him turn.

"Why didn't you come to me when I needed you?" Istvan pleaded, without emotion in his voice. He'd probably asked himself the same thing thousands of times.

"We ... didn't know!" Rey said, "we sent letter after letter, but we didn't get anything after the first two."

Istvan's shoulders slumped, "that would figure. Then I suppose that I should apologize for presuming too much. I got nothing from anyone, after a month anyway."

"Istvan," Alexander said, crouching next to him and very carefully putting his hand on his broad, taut shoulder, "tell us what happened."

"You want my story. You won't like it."