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The appointed hour encroached, and the squire waited in the shadow of the building where a bus stop stood to his right. He remained some paces away from it, for fear that any night route busses might come by and expect to pick him up, or someone decided to stop off there and shoot him. The night felt relatively calm, if a bit chilly - only a slight wind blew through Third Street, where the trees shuddered with their waning count of leaves.

Scholomance fidgeted with the signet ring on a chain, which rested in the palm of his left hand. Two fingers pressed to either side of the royal blue gem crowning it, and he inspected the beveling that chiseled out a symbol in its surface. He wondered, in the way that he always wondered in anxious situations, if the message sent. Perhaps knight correspondence suffered similar drawbacks to email, where messages bounced back with a notification that the server failed to locate the recipient. But he hadn’t seen his message turn up again, and he was fairly certain that he spelled Babylon correctly - though he consistently wondered if, perhaps, the magical force that sent the message away might’ve misinterpreted his o as an a. Of his more realistic concerns, he worried that this Babylon Knight may not even show, and he couldn’t blame the knight for that; he imagined, if he were the recipient of such a note, that traps became a concern after a time. Aegir intimated the craftiness of their enemy once before.

They all did, come to think of it.

But he forced himself to remain patient, and only indulged his neuroses so far as to pace slowly toward the street lamp to his right. Still, no spark of life became known to him in the still night.

Babylon trusted ring mail. He was as of yet unaware of any successful attempts to hack it - even if a corrupted knight happened to keep their ring when they crossed over to the Negaverse, it would become utterly useless. Scholomance scored points for contacting him the right way, and another for namedropping people who Babylon knew meant him no harm. So regardless of whether they’d met before, he was confident the squire approached him with honorable intentions.
As the hour suggested in the letter approached, Babylon made his way to the requested meeting spot. He was glad for the change in weather - Babylon’s uniform was meant for Mercury’s long, cold nights, and summer in Destiny City often left him sweating uncomfortably. October was the start of the nice part of the year, as far as he was concerned.

There was exactly one squire signature waiting for him near the Macy’s building. “Scholomance?” asked Babylon, approaching the solitary figure. “Correct me if I’m saying that wrong. Babylon. I, uh, I got your letter?” How many other knights of Mercury were there with glowing lines on their faces, anyway? None, last he’d checked.

He looked up at the building. “My dad brought me here once. Bought me a suit for my bar mitzvah.”

Scholomance felt an approach of a curious kind - he was not, so far as he was aware, distinctly acclimated to each of the different subsets of the war that they fought, so the advent of an unrecognized feel did not faze him as distinctly as he expected. The presence seemed similar to Ida in how remarkably brilliant it felt, as if a light breathing heat through a cold day. As if a prism that produced a thousand refractions to fill up a room.

When the figure made himself known, Scholomance first noted the unusual glow lighting his features, and found it - again - similar to Ida’s, though perhaps not in color. The circuitry resolved as the man drew closer. If Scholomance ventured a guess about it, he’d assume that this man was the Babylon he intended to meet. The descriptors that Glitnir volunteered fit him perfectly.

Initially Scholomance smiled, and then remembered that his half-mask thwarted all efforts to look amenable (‘intimidating’ was the first word to come to mind). He rolled the stretch of cloth downward until the garish, toothy smile printed across its surface was no longer displayed. At least then, he hoped, his smile looked significantly more benign. “Babylon, then.” He held out a gloved hand for a handshake, as much as a peace offering - he expected that if Juno kicked his a** once for his appearance, then that vein of thinking would gain prevalence with this new appearance. Babylon, however, lacked that air of murder about him.

The mention of personal memories attached to such a building proved a boon. Scholomance remembered from his own grueling years of customer service that volunteering such information assisted in making connections with the company. If connections were meant to be kept…

“Glitnir mentioned a lot about you, so you and Hvergelmir were my top choices to contact. I shouldn’t have dragged my feet as much as I did for contact, but… Knighthood isn’t a terribly bright venture, is it?” It seemed quite the opposite with his introduction to his wonder, and visits thereafter. The war and its fronts offered no happy solace, either - it no longer looked the teenage gang war that he assumed it was.

His hands folded in a lattice over his waist while he spoke. “When I first became a page,” More like after, given the circumstances “I was under the impression that this alternate identity game was just an outdoors masquerade with teenage gang war connotations. But, a few key experiences taught me that I was wrong on that front, murder attempts happen, and I thought it all ended there. Wander around, meet people, fight for your life, and all’s well that ends well. But, trendy as it’s becoming, I was wrong again.” And how could he explain the rest?

“It seems that… Being a knight comes with certain expectations. Or, maybe that’s limited to being a Scholomance knight. I haven’t met enough knights to make assumptions on it. But… Can you tell me - what are the purposes in becoming a knight?”

Babylon returned the smile. “That’s a hell of a mask,” he said, watching gratefully at Scholomance pushed it down from his face. It would have been a little too unnerving for comfort to keep conversing with him while he was wearing that death’s head grin. “I’m not sure I follow,” he added. “Bright can have a couple different connotations, you know?” On the one hand, you could say that they were all morons for running around in goofy costumes, but on the other… well, he wasn’t sure what Scholomance was getting at. He hoped he wasn’t calling their entire order dumb.

“I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than your initial impression,” said Babylon. Scholomance had to be holding his head above water if he’d made it to his squire promotion, but you could be doing relatively okay and still not know what your role was in the larger scope was. “I don’t know what Glitnir’s told you about the uh, stakes, in this war?” Honestly, he hadn’t seen Glitnir in a while - he hoped the other knight was doing okay and finding his way.

Babylon gestured up to the gargoyles, all lit up in their new, customized lighting. “We should move away from the street level. I’d be happy to fill you in on stuff, tell you about knightly duties and all that, but we’re sitting ducks out here. At least on the roof we’ll be able to see people coming.”

Once they were repositioned amidst the air conditioning units and the gargoyles, Babylon set his lantern down between them, letting an HVAC run serve as a table. “So, the big thing,” he said, “is that we fight against the forces of Chaos and everything they stand for, namely the destruction of life and the universe as we know it. Past that, every knight has their own individual duties to their Wonder. Civic leaders or explorers or historians or… whatever the expectations you mentioned. I don’t presume to know how Wonders I’ve never been to work.”

Scholomance followed Babylon to the upper reaches of the building. In each jump, he found it significantly easier to achieve distances that were difficult as a page. His step still landed lightly, but the entire process of ascending a building of this size surprised him for its recent ease. He supposed, then, that these were the boons of earning greater power. One of many, he knew, but those prospects unnerved him as much as they delighted.

“I meant that it’s a grim business,” he clarified when he climbed upon the parapet. “A sobering one. And I’m not terribly fond of sobriety, either.” If any one venture encouraged alcoholism, Scholomance was certain that knighthood qualified.

The squire paced beyond the whirling fans that stood in a line on the rooftop. The tar paper scuffed beneath his feet. “He didn’t answer a lot of questions, but I think it’s on me for not asking them. He did, however, cover the basic survival tips as a knight of this day. And how to access my wonder, which… Is where my troubles started, I suppose.” Inwardly Scholomance castigated himself for his lack of thinking through his points before approaching Babylon. While he put effort into it, and formed a convenient outline on his computer, the personal interaction and charge behind the conversation itself left him scrambling to keep his points straight. He might’ve looked skittish then, or sorely misinformed.

“There is something expected of me, but I don’t know what it is.” And how could he say more than that? “At first I thought that it involved patrolling around like I was told, maybe get rid of some youma, and convincing Negaverse agents to ******** off but that hadn’t made a difference to this… It’s almost a compulsion, or an unrelenting anxiety. But whatever it is, it’s not from my personal concerns.” He sighed. “Sorry, I’m not explaining this properly.” Mostly he found it difficult to keep all the stimuli straight, let alone organizing them to articulate to someone else. Putting words to emotions he found only vaguely familiar proved its own tribulation.

So chaos is out to destroy all life. That makes sense with the interest in ripping starseeds and draining energy. But what would be the purpose of that? “Isn’t life, by nature, chaotic? You’re certain that’s the goal of the Negaverse and the Dark Mirror?” Perhaps gaining some perspective on the declared enemy might clarify his own purpose in matters.

Or he was intended to create his own purpose.

Babylon chuckled, sounding somewhat older than his age. “Come by my place sometime,” he offered. “I’ll put aside a bottle of wine and we can shoot the s**t - but we’ve got business to take care of tonight, haven’t we? And I’m unproductive when I drink. So, another time, yeah?” He wasn’t sure if mixing Scholomance and alcohol seemed like a good idea or not - he didn’t know him nearly enough to make a judgment call.

Taking a seat beside his lantern, Babylon considered the what he knew about Wonders. “Different Wonders have different purposes,” he said. “Cities and waystations and laboratories and fortifications. You might have an ancestor to tell you what you’re meant to do with yours, or else memories… I’d say it’ll become clear if you just look around enough, but some people don’t like leaving that much up to chance.” It was tremendously frustrating to be in a position of experience and not be able to offer more hands-on assistance. Whatever Scholomance discovered at his Wonder, he would have to discover himself.

“The way the war looks here, gangs fighting each other over pieces of territory?” he asked with a shrug. “It’s relatively recent. It’s not how it’s meant to work. We’re supposed to spend most of our times at our wonders, fulfilling whatever our duties there are. It’s just.. the whole cosmic balance is out of whack. Like, the universe tends towards entropy, yes, you’re right? But chaos is supposed to be balanced with order. You’re supposed to rage against the dying of the light or else everything just goes utterly sideways.”

Hopefully, he thought, that made sense - otherwise, Babylon was concerned that he was not turning out to be nearly as useful as glitnir had suggested he would be.

”I’ll take you up on that if it’s bring-your-own-whiskey. Not much of a wine drinker.” The last bottle of it disappearing with Mont Blonc caused him no heartache, and since he no longer had company who expected he furnish wine or nurture the appearance that he drank it, he hadn’t bothered replacing it. The sentiment found some appreciation in him nonetheless, even if he expected such a meeting between them may never occur.

Scholomance stared into the cold light of the lantern for several minutes and didn’t bother to lift his gaze when Babylon seated himself. He spoke while he looked into its glow. Hypnotic, he might’ve called it at another time. “I did meet a man there. He seemed… off, in some ways. He called himself the prior knight of Scholomance, which I assume qualifies him as an ancestor. I did ask him multiple times about the purpose of the wonder but he kept dodging the question or claimed that he couldn’t remember. To be honest with you, I’d be perfectly fine if my knightly duties were comparable to a harem whore, but I don’t think that’s the case.” Finally his gaze left the lantern to look at Babylon, and over his face danced a solid splotch of orange, yellow, green.

“But I don’t like looking around there. Scholomance is not a pleasant place. It doesn’t particularly welcome me.” He felt such descriptions were oversimplifications for the real Scholomance, but what did it matter? He found less reason now to return to the wonder than before; Babylon would likely never see it. Perhaps that proved better for both of them.

“The war looks a helluva lot more like that turf war than any balancing act of cosmic powers. I can’t imagine that fist fights in front of Dollar City are supposed to rectify universal balance. And how do wonders fit with this? If we’re supposed to spend most of our time there as you said, then how does that impact the ‘chaos vs. order’ quotient?” Scholomance resumed a slow pace before Babylon in a straight line, perpendicular to the knight’s line of sight. “And how is anyone intended to balance this chaos-order equilibrium? Murder them all?”

Scholomance paused, spared a glance toward Babylon for an answer, and slipped in one last question for good measure. “And what happened to your face?”

Babylon nodded. “My own ancestor was similarly unforthcoming when I first arrived at Babylon,” he said, trying to capitalize on what looked to be common ground. “Wouldn’t stop talking about how awful it was that I was what his line had come to. Like I was a goddamn disappointment - and to be fair, I was nineteen years old and an immature shithead, so he had a point.” He doubted that maturity was Scholomance’s problem - the man struck him as serious as a heart attack - but any ancestor could dock points for inexperience and be more or less correct.

“Maybe he’ll warm up to you if you prove you’re not going away,” he said consideringly. “Ancestors were dealt a rough hand. They died with the end of the Silver Millennium, but while everyone else entered the reincarnation cycle, they were waylaid. Their starseeds are still at their wonders, and they have to stand… mine called it the vigil. A thousand years alone, maintaining our Wonders and remembering everything we’ll need to know. If they’d just been allowed to reincarnate, they’d have been reborn the same time we were born. They’d be us. You’d be bitter, too, if you’d been made to wait that long, if everyone you ever knew was young again, and alive, and all you had to look forward to was training an apprentice and then, maybe, being allowed to miss the next thousand years so you can live again - and the next thousand years aren’t even assured. Who knows if there’ll even be a world for them to reincarnate into.”

He shrugged, as if the gesture could give him some kind of plausible deniability if whatever Scholomance decided to do next didn’t work. “He may warm up to you when he sees you’re serious about your knighthood. You may have to do some things at your wonder first, to win his favor. If it’s in disrepair, you may need to fix it.”

But really, he couldn’t assume anything about how Scholomance’s ancestor would respond. Saturn knights were a broody and mysterious bunch, and he didn’t expect their historical counterparts to be any different. “I’m not sure how equilibrium is meant to be reached,” he said. “Just that right now, it’s swung very far in favor of the Negaverse. They’re in every major city in the world, hunting down senshi and knights as soon as they awaken, skinning guardian cats for causing trouble. Destiny City is lucky - Order has a foothold here. We don’t have that anywhere else.”

But, like, that didn’t explain what was up with his face - and that honestly seemed like the one thing everyone wanted to know. “There’s a magical process called transcendence,” said Babylon, “whereby a senshi or knight does a service to their planet or wonder and in return is granted protection against corruption. The glowing marks tend to be a side effect.”

Scholomance blinked at Babylon’s description of first meeting his ancestor. “It’s surprising there are any knights, if their introduction to knighthood is so shitty. Or did he not treat you like dirt right out of the gate?” I imagine the conversation demanded a few exchanges before his ancestor could consider him a terrible successor. But I don’t know that Blaine thinks quite like that of me… Maybe it’s too difficult to explain.

“That sounds like a s**t job, but they never run out of things to do.” Scholomance stopped his pace to look toward the stars, and while he knew not where saturn was along the sparsely mottled darkness, he felt the presence of his wonder nonetheless. It wound its derisive fingers about his mind when he felt even a margin lesser than his best. “No one can fathom that kind of life. Trying to draw comparisons for it is pointless. I suppose it explains some of his behaviors. I expect I would seem off, too, if sequestered from all life for a thousand years.” He dropped his head, then, to stare at the ground and the microuniverse of dirt and decay and weathering. He stared at the hundred-million pockmarks that peppered the stretch of ceiling and wondered if he, too, would meet death and pay for his knighthood by a thousand years toiling in Scholomance.

“Do you think we’ll end up in the same predicament? Spending a thousand years alone, I mean.” The thought of it remained so far beyond his comprehension that he felt neither trepidation nor glee for it.

And Babylon’s explanations on equilibrium between the factions raised more questions for the squire. “How do you know that it’s in favor of the Negaverse? Did you find out from your ancestor, or is it a part of your wonder?” The knight described a surfeit of occupations for the wonders of knighthood - any one of these may include monitoring this balance he mentioned. “Or do you mean to say that Negaverse occupancy is, additionally, a universal force and not just a physical one? To me, having so many Negaverse agents on this planet is like having a lot of fish - and having a lot of fish does not necessarily equate to having a lot of water, if you follow.”

For a time after Babylon introduced transcendence, Scholomance did not speak. Afterward, when he broke the silence, he did not speak of his opinion on the matter. “Ida has similar marks.”

Babylon exhaled in a sound that was not quite a laugh. “No,” he said, “It was pretty much right out of the gate. And then I decided I was gonna be a great knight anyway just to spite him… so I guess the approach worked. He came around. Eventually.” Pretty much just in time to be returned to the cauldron - but he’d been a good teacher. Babylon remembered him fondly, once all the bullshit was out of the way.

As for whether they’d meet the same fate, well, fortunately Babylon felt a little bit more secure about that. “I don’t think so,” he said. “The knighthoods are meant to be passed more or less continuously. When our service ends, we’ll train pages of our own and then we’ll be free to live the rest of our days doing whatever it is retired superheroes do. Gardening, probably.”

Maybe he’d catalogue all the plant species growing at Babylon. That would probably keep him busy for a year or two - Babylon had never considered retirement in any particular depth. He was young, with no heir and no plans to surrender the knighthood any time soon, and the war seemed interminable, anyway.

The conversation was moving swiftly, and Babylon was out of time to consider his future plans further. “Universal, sort of,” he said. “A thousand years ago, there was a war, and Chaos consumed all the life on every planet but Earth. Like, human civilization is all that remains of a vast galactic empire, which sounds nuts, I know. The Negaverse is only on Earth because Earth is the only place left.”

He shrugged. If Scholomance was going to balk, he was going to balk at the Wachowski-esque backstory that made Babylon sound like an ancient aliens conspiracy theorist. He was getting used to that.

“Yeah,” he confirmed. “Ida does. She’s transcended, too. There’s a few of us, but more all the time. It’s useful.”

Babylon, at least, received resolution through dedication to being the best knight he could be. Scholomance wondered if the same might apply to him, or if the idea of such closure was foolish and too humanized for the wonder to which he belonged. He certainly wanted to believe that consistent hard work might exonerate him in the views of the location, but finding out necessitated further visits. And not just one, by the sound of it, but potentially many. There are too many questions surrounding the place than I can answer from Earth. But do I have the constitution to keep visiting long enough to answer them? Will I, then, find the explanations worthwhile? And what price might I pay to do so?

Scholomance blinked dumbly at Babylon when he spoke of training proteges to perpetuate each knighthood. ... And why in the brightest blazes of hell would I subject anyone to carrying on with Scholomance? The damnable place should rot. After a calming breath, he picked a significantly less caustic mode of response. “I suppose trainees are something to consider after I’ve gone quite a bit further with this… knighthood.”

The sole boon to that conversation was the assurance that he might not wind up with the same fate as his ancestor.

While Scholomance tried valiantly to listen and remain consistently tuned in for a conversation, there came an inevitable moment when his gaze grew distant and his mildly neurotic gesticulations and mannerisms stilled while his mind followed a divergent path. Onlookers might find him rude for these times, or unnecessarily distracted, or any number of pitiable or condemnable offenses, but such tangents proved much too strong for the squire to resist every time. In these occasions, he often considered stark factoids picked up throughout his life or transgressive happenings that painted life in bleaker tones, but in the most recent instance of his absenteeism with Babylon, he envisioned himself at the age of thirty-five in a modest garden.

He did, however, manage to tune in for the intergalactic mayhem that nuked all planets but Earth. “It sounds like a tidy explanation for the lack of life on different planets. And here we thought temperature and pressure and lack of integral elements limited life expansion…” Scholomance feigned a scoff. “Not that Weinbaum’s story wasn’t a good attempt at theorizing. In any case, the evidence of these obviously constructed buildings on different planets is enough of an indication toward otherworldly life, and considering I’ve never heard of life existing on any of these homeworlds... “ Meant that Babylon’s story was quite plausible.

“It stands to reason, then, that if everyone died and a reincarnation cycle occurred, then we would probably meet a similar criteria in the future if Order fell and Chaos dominated or this balance remained perpetually out of whack. I suppose the war boils down to fighting the Negaverse for the sake of improving the quality of one’s own life and one’s descendents - at least, to most people.” Such information demanded heavy and thorough introspection to find his own path through the lot of it.

To Babylon’s response concerning Ida, he only smiled. Transcendence might be useful now, but if this war makes headway… I wonder if there’s a point when Order will become the enemy, and those continuing to transcend tip this balance too far in favor of Order. Would we be asked to fight by the side of the Negaverse, then? It’s hard to say.

So much of this is simultaneously too dualistic and oversimplified, then too overcomplicated. We carry too much responsibility if we’re expected to balance the universe. This life is such a dire one.

Babylon didn’t quite shrug - the movement was more confined to his head than to his shoulders. “I mean, yes,” he said. “No one has any control over what happens once they return to the space cauldron. Everything we do here has to be upheld by future generations or it’s for nothing - but you could really say that about any human endeavor. It only lasts so long as people see fit to maintain it…. but that doesn’t mean there’s no point in doing it. I mean, humanity made it this far.”

He could tell that Scholomance was deep in thought from the questions he was asking - if this was what had made it to the surface, then what was being pondered underneath? Babylon was used to rookie knights who needed to be spoon fed information, and it was refreshing to talk to someone who seemed to be putting things together for themself and thinking on their feet. That was admirable… even if he was asking questions that Babylon wasn’t exactly prepared to answer, mostly because he didn’t think anyone had ever asked them before.

“There’s no pressure to know everything all at once,” he said after a moment’s pause. “I’ve had four and a half years to learn everything I know.”

”I think there are some endeavors that could benefit from abandonment.” Unless he discovered a particularly integral aspect of Scholomance that demanded perpetuation, Scholomance considered that he might be the last night to see the wretched campus. Inwardly he promised himself that abandonment should only become an option once he saw the very core of that wonder and its intended operations.

“You’re right, I don’t need to know everything as soon as possible. But… I think I would prefer it if I could learn as much about my wonder as I can with minimal visits. If it truly has a purpose, and that purpose is applicable to what occurs here on Earth, then…” Would it be worth keeping? Would it be worth submitting someone else to the trials of tending Scholomance? “I suppose I’ll have to visit. But it isn’t a place I like to see.

“Which leads me to ask - how did you learn most of your wonder? Was it by visiting the place, through your ancestor, or literature - as I’m certain that Babylon has a great deal of coverage via biblical texts alone, or Google searches? Perhaps some other means?” The ask wasn’t under the assumption that Babylon’s experiences and his could possibly be the same - they couldn’t be, given that the two were privy to entirely different wonders. Scholomance knew next to nothing of Babylon as a wonder, and what limited knowledge he did possess may not even relate to the wonder as it exists on Mercury. What was to say that the Babylon of earth, oft written about in religious text, equated the Babylon on Mercury? Or that the pair fostered a relation beyond a name? Scholomance considered that even the names may not be the same, but ‘Babylon’ became the closest approximation for the Mercury location from their native tongue.

“And beyond all that, have you found that Babylon still holds purpose - even after it was destroyed? Can you say with certainty that Babylon holds pertinence to the war as it exists right now?” Babylon would likely know the answers, given that he had performed some kind of service to his wonder to have earned his transcendence markings. Or Scholomance hoped that such a service promised deep knowledge of one’s wonder.

Scholomance sighed. “If I’m asking too many questions, don’t hesitate to stop me. The responsibility of being a knight is just… Somehow much more than I’ve handled before.”

"So there's no way to tell if your wonder has any relation to its earthly counterpart short of checking into both." Which meant continuing to visit Scholomance. And if there stood no relation between Bram Stoker's school of black magic and his wonder, then he would still need to visit the grounds to continue conducting investigations. Even that course of action assumed that he was interested in pursuing the purpose guarded by his wonder for a thousand years; what was preventing him from simply walking away and resuming life as Isaiah? Surely a wonder's eternal watch over him could not goad his actions for an eternity.

Although, given the scope of the wonder's age, he wagered that it could.

Babylon gave what answers he could, and Scholomance appreciated his forthright nature in admitting the facts - however sparse his information became. He knew of connections and he knew of no connections. Additionally, he explained that his wonder held significance and use to him. "But does it have a purpose for you?" Scholomance's own wonder gave him that very impression during the course of his visits. He wondered if it, perhaps, wasn't the wonder directly but Blaine who steered him toward knighthood. Was that due to Blaine's purpose, then? Perhaps the wonder gave Blaine directives to steer him in different directions for its own benefit, or the wonder truly had no purpose and Scholomance himself wanted to give it one, or its purpose died out long ago and Blaine sought to revive what he remembered of it through Scholomance. He found it difficult to determine on any account.

Again, all roads pointed to revisiting his wonder.

The notion that some contribute more than others did not stray far from applicability to earth's cities, and therefore made perfect sense to the squire. "Right - Dismal Town, Virginia isn't going to offer as much to the earth as a whole than, say, San Jose, California. I doubt the earth would notice if Dismal Town fell off the map, save for heart-wrenching human interest stories. Have you noticed whether there are wonders that prove completely useless to the galaxy as a whole? Or are useless now, but weren't before? Alternatively have you noticed if any wonders still contribute to the current fronts of the war?"

Scholomance frowned slightly. Perhaps he should ask in a different manner. "Do you know what it asks of you, then? Or is there any way to tell?" He knew not if a wonder could communicate, nor if it could choose for a knight its purpose. He felt a queerness inside himself when he considered the past transactions like a bank account history - the number of times he powered up set against the number of times he felt he had to. Nearly all of them correlated positively.

Protection and invention sound far more interesting than a set of buildings out in the middle of nowhere with a whole lot of bones. I suppose I have to find out what it's for. Scholomance looked to a brilliantly illuminated billboard in the distance, advertising CRE T VITY. It felt ironic, given the instances that babylon spoke of. He wondered, then, if the city of Babylon's purpose was as a livable place - and if Babylon prepared it to return to it. He wondered if any of them were intended to go there fore a time, at some point deep in the war, and treat it as their sanctuary in regrouping.

'And I wouldn't say that anywhere is truly useless - he paled a little, but smiled at him.

"Oh, that's exciting." The words weren't spoken sarcastically. I could have it sit in its own dust for another thousand years, provided the next knight doesn't ******** it up and restore the damned place. If there is a next knight. I suppose you're right. I can decide for it instead of it deciding for me." But he found it risky to do so before knowing the reason his wonder was built. What if he destroyed a medical laboratory that had been in operation since time immemorial? Or if Scholomance was a record keeping area with integral information? What if trying to reroute his wonder's purpose killed him? All answers pointed to another visit. He would have to prepare.

"Thank you, Babylon." He said it sincerely.

"I think my ancestor has gone senile from the thousand years of no one to talk to. He seems like his memory is getting some exercise, though - a little more information comes from him each time I come around. It's... Odd, though." Scholomance shrugged it off. He supposed reclamation of memory always proved obscenely difficult when one had thought next to nothing about it for a great span of time. A thousand years was a few too many lifetimes spent taking that knowledge for granted, possibly.

"Never underestimate the power of direction," he offered in kind. "Even if you don't have specific information for me, you've given some general answers. I know what to do next, now." Which, he thought, might outweigh the benefit of specific knowledge about Scholomance. Babylon was still a knight, and spent four long years in a war that never found an end. Surely he wouldn't have continued to do so, or done his wonder a service, if he felt the lot of it was wasted effort. For a moment, Scholomance wondered if Babylon was the altruistic type, but nothing about him suggested it.

The squire glanced toward the bauble handed out, stepped toward the knight ,and did not hesitate in taking it. It glowed a cold blue, but it seemed a far kinder light than the impassive whites at his wonder. Perhaps he was drawing baseless conclusions. "I'm sure it'll be useful." If nothing else, it served as a constant reminder that someone else was out there - that, even in the depths of old catacombs or ancient towers, he wasn't entirely alone. He looked for a spot to affix the light and found, then, that his coat wasn't terribly practical for holding items. Instead of struggling to attach it to a zipper, he simply pocketed the glowing blue orb for later use.

"Maybe I'll send you another letter if I discover anything worthwhile." Scholomance started toward the parapet then, and paused when one boot crowned the top of it. "I hope we can stay in touch, Babylon. Take care." And after stepping to the edge of the building, he leapt the gap and started toward his home in the longest route possible.