\--==Official Submission==-- FROM: General Debinani Rahl RE: Fathers and Their Sons... Debinani Rahl sat in his chair, behind a desk that he was somehow sure should be overflowing with reports and maps and all of the other information he kept close at hand. But it mattered little. He sifted idly through a small chest of items his son had left behind as was routine on missions of his nature. His stripes. He stared at the stripes for a long time. There were so many! How had his son grown so quickly? He shook his head, realizing he had been staring at the light flickering on the wall for what could easily have been hours. The chest lay on the floor, its contents spilled out on the stones; and in his hand he held a tiny sketch of Xavierra. “Both gone now.” He jerked in his chair at the sound of the echoing voice. An apparition stood in the corner of the room, just out of the candlelight. “Father?” he stuttered, trying to get a better picture of the spirit. “Indeed,” responded Adulphus, floating forward and coming to rest near the globe by the desk. “You've been very busy it seems,” he continued, looking over the pristine desk, “one in your position...and with your condition... Well, I'd think you'd be behind on your work. Rahl looked at the desk incredulously. “Yes well...” he started, “I guess I must have done it... I...I suppose.” The apparition nodded, a grimace spreading across his ghostly countenance. “Of course you did. Of course you did.” The door to the room opened and a well-groomed man walked in carrying a steaming goblet smelling of herbs and wine. Adulphus watched him gently close the door and walk across the room to hand the cup to Rahl. He gently extracted the sketch from the old man's hands and pressed the cup into its place. Rahl didn't seem to notice. Without looking up, the man spoke. “You're not wanted here Blood of Mengst, go back where Daithomir sent you,” he said and made a dismissing gesture with his fingertips. The ghost's eyes widened in surprise that the simple doctor sensed his presence, and opened even wider when the gust of ethereal wind ripped through his form and dispelled him completely from the room. “I wish you hadn't done that,” mumbled Rahl, already becoming sleepy with medicine, “We have never talked as father and son.” Doctor Ehrlich smiled softly and helped the old general up from his chair. Leading the man into the bedroom. “You need your sleep m'lord, I wont abide anyone interfering with your well being.” --- Turon gazed at the tower from the several hundred yards away that he had been thrown. He watched the light in his son's bedchambers go out, and the strange man's shadow at the desk in the next room. After he was satisfied that his elderly son was securely asleep and his curious physician gone home, he stopped to examine his surroundings. He found himself beside yet another tower, gazing with a bemused grin at the blood-red sigil on the door. “The Covenant of Blood,” the ghost chuckled, “could that bloodthirsty maniac have come up with a campier name?” The ghost smiled at the sign for a few moments and then became all seriousness. “I think it's time you pay me back for all the slack I cut you....” The ghost disappeared though the iron doors and drifted around the darkest recesses of the structure until he found his query sleeping...well...sleeping like the dead. “SERGEAAAAAAAAAANT!!!!!!!!!!” The commanding shout echoed across all of Northwood. Easily loud enough to wake...well...wake the dead. And then the startled and angry dead composed himself and realized who was shouting at him.