Somehow, Humans had contrived to think of the bear as soft, even cuddly. Human children would often have in their possession a stuffed toy replica of a bear which often bought them comfort in the dark of the night. The real thing, however, was a savage mass of muscle and rage clad in fur and armed with inch long claws and fangs. Such a form, when put into Vorador's hands, had many uses.
His new form roaring its angry bellow, he charged, running on all fours. He only travelled a short distance, but it was more than enough. When he crashed into the rock the wall, which at first glance had seemed quite substantial, broke and burst under the onslaught. Debris clattered down a now exposed tunnel, down into the dark of the open space he had sensed beyond the obstruction. Clearly this newly acquired bestial form was not just a shape for killing things as viscerally as possible, but now was showed to have other benefits. The strength of the bear could easily remove barriers and other ordinary obstacles that impeded his progress. The other forms had their skills that proved intensely useful, from climbing and stealth to the use of poison and immunity to water. The bear's benefits were nowhere near as subtle.
The tunnel was not tall enough for him to change back into his regular shape without having to crouch, so it was more convenient for him to continue on in this new form. Despite being larger than him when he stood up, on all fours it easily fit through the gap. Proceeding into the darkness Vorador perceived yet more benefits. Like the wolf form he had used for centuries, the bear had excellent night vision and a superb sense of smell. The utter black darkness of the tunnel was nothing to him. He could see everything and the smells wafting down the tunnel from its end told him nearly everything he needed to know about what was up ahead. He could smell running water and damp earth, along with the scent of wild animals which caused the bear's nature, powerful and hungry, to push his thoughts towards the hunt. This was always the problem with assuming alternative shapes. They had something of a will of their own. Most of the time that will was puny and negligible. After assuming the form of the spider for instance, Vorador had never had the urge to go catch flies. But the bear was wilful, savage, and was greatly prone to stubbornness. The same had been with the wolf before this, but Vorador had had centuries to enforce his own dominating will upon the wolf. The bear was new to the arrangement and it did not like the concept of being dominated by anything.
Quite firmly the Vampire forced the bear back into its place within his own mind. Its essence had been trapped in the stone for uncounted eons and now it was free but free only on his terms, he was swift to remind it. He was the master, the holder of the leash and the bear went where he wanted it to go.
He had to get back up and find a way to penetrate to the Mandarins’ apartment. Perhaps the skills provided to him by the bear could find a way around that arcane barrier. If he were truly pressed he could simply knock down a wall and it was quite probable he had reached the point of being pressed. Given what he had seen, or perhaps thought had he seen, in the images down in the hidden ruins he was climbing out of then he could not possibly complete this quest fast enough. When he returned to the future era, however, he and the Seer were going to have a nice long talk.
The tunnel he had discovered seemed to be going up, albeit in a roundabout fashion. Here and there pools of trapped, stagnant water had to be navigated around but he smelled them long in advance and they posed no serious obstacle. Soon he found the tunnel as he progressed was host to some grasses and foliage and the smell of moving air was stronger. There was also the faint smell of metal, iron, and copper and another scent which he did not recognise. It was familiar somehow but different enough for him to not immediately put his finger on what it was. He slowed his progress and proceeded very cautiously.
The end of the tunnel came up abruptly in the form of a wide cave mouth, obscured from the outside by a tangled mix of vines and creepers. Such a veil was less than parchment to the claws of a bear and Vorador easily parted the curtain of green, trudging forth into a small copse of trees that shadowed the side of a cliff from which he had emerged. The land folded up around him like the steps of a terrace, trees and bushes jutting out from the edges to try and get the best light.
The clouds overhead were near black and it was difficult to say exactly what time of day it was by simply looking. The wind was blowing strongly and on the air, the overriding smell and sense told him that there was a violent storm coming in off of the sea. He had sensed the possibility of such an occurrence when he had first arrived in the region, now the inevitable turmoil could almost be tasted. The oppression in the air was quite palpable and it caused the fur over his newest alternative shape to rustle violently. In this climate and region of the world, such storms were referred to as 'typhoons' and had the potential to utterly destroy a coastline. Part of him whispered that such elemental chaos could be of advantage to him, especially given that William's army would very soon be attacking the city. A siege from the north and a typhoon from the south would certainly distract the defenders of Zwergstadar.
Coming out into the open, Vorador dismissed the angry, wilful beast and resumed his normal shape. The bear went only reluctantly and he had to fight down its resentment. It would take some time to make himself the undisputed master of the creature, even when it was within himself. For the moment, however, there was little to no time for such animal training.
The moment he was back in his own form, however, he suddenly became aware of the fatal flaw of the new shape. A bear’s sense of smell was so acute that some scents were different to how he could have smelt them in his regular shape. Now that he was back in his normal form, he could instantly tell that the strange, only partly familiar smell he had detected before was the smell of unwashed bodies. Combined with the smell of metal it could only mean one thing: the presence of a larger number of armed men. He reacted instantly, reached back to draw the two axes from his back. As if that startled movement had been the cue, however, the soldiers hiding around trees and in the undergrowth came out from their hidden positions of ambush. They were all local men with slanted eyes wearing the strange metal and leather armour that was the native preference. Amongst them, however, were several wearing the strange overlapping scale chainmail he had seen on the palace guards.
They charged at him with a roar, swords and axes already in full swing. Despite the advantage of numbers their reaction time was merely Human, slow by comparison. Vorador's hands grasped the hilts of the twin axes and before the swords came within range, he was already moving. Havoc and Malice whistled through the air and slammed into the first man to reach him. The leather and metal armour was woefully inadequate to fend off a weapon of the axes’ calibre. Havoc sliced down from the left shoulder while Malice came up from the hip. The blades of the twin axes met in the middle in an explosion of ruptured organs.
As the eviscerated halves of the would-be attacker fell to one side, Vorador barged past and kept on the offence. The second man was lunging forward at him. He had discarded heavier two-handed weapons in favour of a pair of short blades. Perhaps the man had thought that with such a pair of heavy weapons, Vorador would be slower and thus susceptible to attacks from the flank, taking advantage of the gaps in his defence. What the man had not counted on, however, was that Vampires were both stronger and faster than Humans and so Vorador was able to wield Havoc and Malice with just as much speed as he did his blades. When he came in to lunge, stabbing at his side, Vorador neatly dodged the attempt and carved the man savagely up the middle with Malice. The axe carved its way from the crotch, up through the body to split the skull in two. The corpse did not so much fall as collapse inward like a demolished house.
The third soldier, having seen the utter destruction of the first two, dodged back quickly as Vorador came at him with Havoc and Malice carving the air. He was armed with an axe of his own that had a longer handle. He tried to use this to his advantage by taking the weapon out almost to the hilt and swinging it around wildly to give himself greater range. Vorador did not even flinch at the foolish attempt. Darting in quickly, he grabbed the handle just below the blade and tore the weapon from the soldier’s hand. The man did not have time to contemplate his disarmed state as Havoc neatly carved his head with a loud, sickening crunch.
With three of their number dead the other soldiers quickly backed off, forming a semicircle of weapons around him. Vorador moved to attack up the offensive again but as soon as he did, more soldiers suddenly appeared on the terraces above. These men were not armed with swords or axes, though. They had drawn crossbows and each one of them had their bolts pointed straight at him. A quick glance told him there were at least two dozen crossbowmen all around him. If they all fired at once it would be impossible for him to dodge them all.
Slowly he lowered the twin axes but kept them at his side, dripping blood and bits of brain onto the ground. He stood amidst the butchered carcasses of those he had killed, watching all of the men around him steadily, just waiting for the moment to act.
 “You have become...” A voice from somewhere off in the foliage above began.
 “...an annoyance.” Another voice finished without so much as a pause between to mark the beginning of a new sentence for it was not, just a mere continuation.

Vorador looked up sharply. At the top of the terraces on a patch of stone clear of foliage stood five men. Their features were identical and the only difference between them seemed to be the colours of their robes. Vorador recognised them at once as the Mandarins, those strange would-be princes he had encountered before in the rocky area around the Lake of Spirits. From their perch they looked down on him, each with identical expressions of distain. Vorador froze as he realised what had happened. Somehow the five mind-linked sorcerers had sensed his presence all along and had merely been waiting to lure him into an ambush.
“We offered you the chance to...” One of them started with dismissive contempt.
“...live amongst our faithful.” Another finished in the exact same tone.
“But you rejected our offer and...” The one in robes of white started and the one in red finished the sentence.
“...must face the consequences.”
Vorador's attention, however, was drawn to one of the five men in particular. Each of the Mandarins was armed and armoured in various ways. One had a pair of bracers and a sword, another had a bow with a quiver full of arrows strapped across his shoulder. Another was clad in that same scale overlapping chainmail of the palace guards. The one with the golden yellow robes, however, was the one which attracted the Vampire's immediate attention. Attached to his arm was an almost perfectly round shield, delicately and expertly carved with markings that made it look like a full moon. Even from this distance he could tell two things about it. The first was that the maker of the shield had been Ajatar-Cadre. He had been tutored by her to achieve mastery of his own art so he would know her handiwork anywhere. The second was that the shield was made out of that otherworldly ore, Eclipse-ka, just like Enlil's spear the Gáe Bolga had been. Undoubtedly this was the shield he was searching for, the artefact William had called the 'Shield of the Lance Lord'.
“I have no interest in you, or William, or your entire primitive region.” He said, never taking his eyes off the pale item. He gestured at it with a short nod of his head. “Just give me the shield and I will be on my way.”
As one the Mandarins looked between him and the artefact, their faces creasing in unison into deep disgusted sneers.
“Now you show your true colours by...” Predictably one of them began.
“...coming as a thief, to steal our treasures.” Another finished. Then as one they glared at him with an easily recognisable expression of distain, lofty arrogance and arrogance.
“The shield is ours.” They said in perfect unison, a chorus of unwarranted pride.
“The city is ours.” That misplaced pride was so all encompassing in them that their voices rang with it.
“The East itself is ours.” The pride crossed over the line in full-blown arrogance. Vorador had seen that level of arrogance before in a youthful Kain, striving for dominance of Nosgoth.
“We are the Mandarins!” They were almost shouting now, their chorusing voices echoing down the gully and back into the cave exit behind him.
“We were forged together to be...” One of them started.
“...the ultimate union of minds.” Another finished. By now Vorador was getting very tired of having one sentence start with one man and finish with another.
“Efficient.” They had gone back to ranting in unison again. “Powerful.” The Vampire tensed, knowing that in the middle of this tirade they could order their men to attack. “Perfect!” One of them began to raise an arm, an unmistakable gesture to give their soldiers the order.
“That might have been the original intent...” Another voice began and the power of it froze the Mandarins and their soldiers on the spot. The sudden change on the Mandarins was palpable. They froze as one, identical expressions of arrogance turning to suddenly all unique ones of shock and fear. Quickly they turned to look up at a rocky bluff directly above the cave entrance. Vorador turned himself, following their gaze.
A figure stood there, still for the moment obscured in shadow. It gestured at the five would-be princes dismissively with one hand.
“But the five of you are merely an unfortunate fluke.” It said firmly and now, Vorador recognised the voice. The figure stepped forward and now, even in the dim light, the Vampire recognised the oddly distorted form of Nupraptor.

“Nothing more!" The Guardian of the Pillar of the Mind declared with finality, his gaze fixed on the Mandarins.
“Mentalist!” The one holding the shield gasped and backed off a step, out of unison with his fellows. It was the first time Vorador had seen them suddenly lose coordination with one another.
“How did you...” One of them started in quavering voice.
“...get here without our knowing it?!” Another finished and although they still completed each others’ sentences, the inflections and tone were now all wrong. Their soldiers all looked up in surprise, clearly bewildered and without the faintest idea what was going on. Many of them looked confused and disoriented, as if their minds were becoming loose in direct proportion to their masters’ distress. Several staggered and dropped their weapons.
“I am the Guardian of the Mind, deluded pretenders.” Nupraptor replied flatly, his face expressionless but his tone and gaze implying mountains of contempt. He pointed at them sharply.
“Retreat back to your city and take your bewitched host away, for the time has come to end the chaos you have wrought.” His enlarged head seemed to pulse from within with the eldritch power granted to him by his Guardianship. The Mandarins flinched back, fear and terror clear in their eyes at the sight of that strange glow. The one in red robes was the first to vanish, disappearing into the misty haze of a translocation. The others followed after him almost instantly, their mental coordination shaken badly by their fear. As soon as they were all gone, the soldiers all around seemed to shiver as if surfacing from some deep water. They collectively gasped, looking around with genuine and startled confusion. Then one of them saw Vorador. At the sight of such a demonic looking figure he let out a yell. The others turned to look and after one glimpse of the Vampire they turned and fled, discarding their weapons as if they had suddenly become white hot.
Vorador watched them bolt, making no move to follow them. Once they were all out of sight he slowly turned and gazed back up at the Mentalist above him. His expression was decidedly unfriendly, eyes narrowed in annoyance. For a moment there was silence, broken only by the increasing rumble of the oncoming storm.
“Too much has happened to me of late for me to afford the niceties of polite conversation, Nupraptor.” Vorador eventually began and his tone was firm. “So I would strongly advise that you drop the pretence of stubbornness and illuminate me, or I will presently become vexed.”
Surprisingly, Nupraptor did not immediately act defensive like he had back in Weirstein. Instead his shoulders slumped and he looked resigned, albeit reluctantly. If anything the Mentalist just looked tired.
“You needn’t be so agitated, Vampire.” He said with a sigh and raised two fingers to rub his large temples. “The truth is that, after long consideration, I have decided that it would be in my best interests now that you should know all.” Vorador raised an eyebrow to this statement.
“Odd change for one who proclaimed it was none of my business.” He remarked. Nupraptor certainly looked irritated at that jibe, his face creasing into an annoyed frown. With a gesture of one hand he used his formidable powers of telekinesis to levitate down from the crag on which he stood, drifting down to the ground. Once he was eye level with the Vampire he looked him square in the face and Vorador could see reluctance but also an urgency there.
“I am simply out of options to undo this colossal mess before it becomes too difficult to avert its spreading.” The man admitted. “I can find no allies to turn to for aid.” He gestured irately out vaguely in a westerly direction and the Vampire gathered that he was referred to his fellow Guardians, none of who had been willing in the slightest to assist him. Bane's attitude was clearly the norm amongst the Circle. “So in desperation, admittedly, I am turning to you.”
Vorador said nothing, his gaze unblinking as he maintained an expectant silence. It endured for perhaps a moment too long, as the Mentalist was reluctant to speak even when he himself had said it was now necessary. The expression on his face, a mix of frustration and shame, was evidence enough of that.
“When we last met, you surmised that my difficulties had something to do with the war that engulfs this region.” He began eventually and in a very low voice. “And you were indeed correct. The Mandarins are my creation.”
Vorador's other eyebrow raised at that, begging further explanation. Nupraptor glowered and carried on.

“It was I who melded their five minds together, in an effort to create a symbiosis of thought and will, a union of intention.” He confessed and his face darkened even more. “But my experiment was flawed. Instead of five minds coming together to cooperate, five flawed personalities merged into one.” He looked up at the Vampire. “Do not be fooled by their use of the words ‘we’ and ‘us’. Their minds are now so closely merged that there is only one will between them, one overriding personality and intelligence.”
Vorador considered this intelligence for a moment, his face betraying nothing. In truth the revelation did not shock him. Few sorcerers in Nosgoth were skilled enough in the manipulation of the mind to achieve any sort of mental alchemy and the melding of five minds into one could only be achieved by the most supreme of those sorcerers, the Guardian of the Mind himself. In hindsight, he supposed that he ought to have perceived this a long time ago. But seemingly to make up for that he saw quite clearly there was more to this than Nupraptor had just told him.
“Then why not simply undo what you have done, reverse the process?” He asked directly. The Mentalist almost seemed to growl at that question, taking umbrage.
“Do you think I have not tried?” He asked sharply. Reaching up he tapped the side of his grossly enlarged skull with two fingers. “With their five minds merged into one, they are now immune to my own arts. I cannot penetrate their collective will, or separate one merged mind from the others. They are beyond my ability to affect.”
Vorador's eyebrows came down in a puzzled frown at that.
“Yet they seemed frightened of you.” He remarked, intending not to let Nupraptor gloss over anything now that he seemed to finally be willing to talk candidly.
“I have gone to great lengths to conceal the fact that I can do nothing to them." Nupraptor replied, sounding almost embarrassed. "So far, their fear of me has kept them in check and confined to the East.” He met Vorador's gaze again and he was now deadly serious. “But one day they will call my bluff. Their merging seems to have granted them no small power of influence on the minds of those around them.” Vorador's frown deepened again.
“They can control the minds of others?” He asked, thinking of the confused and disoriented reactions of the soldiers after their masters had disappeared.
“Not directly.” Nupraptor corrected but he seemed no less grave. “Rather they inspire a zealot-like fanaticism in those they ensnare, transforming them into converts and devoted servants.” Earnest concern, rather than political wheedling, was in his voice and Vorador found himself believing him when he finished his case by saying; “If the Mandarins are not destroyed, they will eventually unleash upon Nosgoth a wave of religious brutality that would make the crusades of the Sarafan seem a bland morning service by comparison.”
Despite Nupraptor's sincere belief of the seriousness of this issue, Vorador was not overly concerned. History had made no mention of such chaos at this time so with or without his aid, he knew for a certainty that the Mandarins’ bid for power and conquest would fail.
“Whatever gods or men pretending to be gods that Mankind worships are of no concern to me.” He said flatly, folding his arms and looking away but even as he did he had a sudden idea. Quickly he looked back at the Mentalist with sudden interest. “But the Mandarins have something I want.” He said. “And their den is concealed by a barrier. Could you dispel it?” No doubt in their fright, that would be where the Mandarins would have fled to and where the shield would now be. Now would be the ideal time to strike and take the artefact, while they were dismayed and cowering. The added confusion of William's assault and the oncoming storm would be even more chaos that would distract.
“Their barrier does not impede me.” Nupraptor confirmed confidently, sudden hope dawning in his eyes as he perceived that the Vampire was considering lending assistance.
“If I aid you in destroying them, I will claim this item." Vorador told him quite firmly. "Is that understood?” Nupraptor just rolled his eyes exasperatedly as if the stated condition were somehow irrelevant.
“Help me put them down and you may help yourself to anything you please.” He sounded elated as if he had finally found the answer to a great and terrible problem.
-0-
“It seems it must be my fate to make strange agreements with members of the Circle I had once butchered. Ever since I had started this quest, I had been stumbling from one irony to the next. Just who was having a joke at my expense?”

-0-
The black expanse of the typhoon was looming high, preparing to crash out on the coast. A swirling vortex of dark cloud that crackled with luminous threads of lightning. The sea beneath it tossed and writhed like a living thing, turned to a frenzied, boiling froth. The great winds it generated came howling forward first as its vanguard, blasting the coastline and uprooting anything without a sturdy anchor to hold it down. Trees, bushes, and even small rocks were sent hurtling in all directions.
When the storm finally struck it did so with an audible clash, like a giant smashing its fist into the side of a mountain. A wall of freezing rain and hail swept forward deluging everything in its path and smashing what remained.
Zwergstadar almost seemed to hunker down in the grip of the storm, blasted by water, ice, wind, and a terrible, all-consuming cold. Soon the typhoon would travel northeast, trailing its strength before finally dissipating deep in the northern Fens. Here, however, it vented its full fury and chaos reigned.
Just outside the range of the storm's might, William observed the city with a faint smile, the sword he had withdrawn from the stone in the pagan grotto balanced atop one shoulder.
His generals were arranged beside him, and waiting just out of sight of the walls behind some hills were the massed ranks of his army, already unloading the disabled pieces of siege engines from the pack trains.
"Your Majesty, I must advise against this." One of his generals remarked although the man had to raise his voice over the rising howl of the wind. "To attack in the midst of such a storm would be incredibly dangerous."
"I am aware of the risk." William replied, keeping his gaze fixed on the city, which was from that distance a mere smudge amongst the darkness of the rolling storm. "But such chaos affects our enemy more than it does us." He hefted his magnificent blade and pointed its tip out at the expanse before them, a causeway leading up to the main gates of the city. "Shrouded in such darkness, it will be difficult for their archers to pick off our men on the approach."
Slowly the young king's expression changed to become almost ecstatic, eyes wide with anticipation and lips drawn back in a grin of excitement.
"This is end of the long road. With this one victory I will become a living part of the history of the world." Sharply he turned his horse and gazed at his still sceptical generals, his expression of boyish enthusiasm.
"Audentes fortuna iuvat." He said to him in a tongue Humanity had all but forgotten, an ancient language that only a learned few spoke let alone understood. Enough of the generals, however, had had sufficient education to understand the reference.
"Fortune favours the bold." One of them said, stating the translation for those still with puzzled expressions. William's grin spread even wider.
As the storm raged, engulfing Zwergstadar in a near black oblivion, the large lumbering shapes of the trebuchets rolled out to take up bombarding positions.