 the Council of Hierarchs?"
	"It was nothing major, Sarraya," she answered.  "He had a run-in with Stragos Bane."
	Sarraya rose about two spans into the air and gasped.  "He's still alive?" she asked in sudden fear.
	"Who is Stragos Bane?" Tarrin asked.
	"He's a Were hunter!" Sarraya said in an intentionally melodramatic voice.  "He's about the only human the Were-kin were really afraid of!"
	Dolanna nodded.  "He just happened to come to Haley's inn to stay while waiting for a ship to leave Dayis.  Stragos immediately knew what he was and attacked him.  Unfortunately, his inn was burned down during the tussle, and Haley's true nature was revealed to the city."
	"Why would Haley be afraid of a human?" Jesmind asked dismissively.
	"Because he wears silvered armor and carries a magical silver sword that seems to have been made specifically to kill Were-kin," Sarraya answered.  "And he also happens to be a good fighter.  He'd killed some hundred Were-kin about ten years ago, then he vanished.  He seemed to try to hunt down any Were-kin that left the Frontier when he was around, but then he vanished, and everyone thought that someone had killed him."
	"I guess they didn't," Kimmie said mildly, swatting Tara's paw away as she tried to stop her mother from straightening her hair.
	"Rumor in Dayis was that Stragos Bane came to Dayis to find your trail, Tarrin," Dolanna told him.  "The stories of you are many, and because you are Were, I guess it is only natural that this Were hunter would seek you out.  After all, you are the most famous Were-kin in the world right now."
	"That'll be a laugh," Sarraya snickered.  "When he shows up in Aldreth, call me, Tarrin.  I want to see you thrash him."
	"I guess he's got too big of a head now," Kimmie agreed, though not as boisterously.  "He'd be a maniac to try to kill Tarrin."
	"He'd be the ultimate prey," Jesmind said steadily, her eyes thoughtful.  "The ultimate test."
	Tarrin could understand that line of thinking.  To this Stragos, Tarrin would be something of the top of the pyramid, the keystone in the arch.  If he could kill Tarrin, then the rest of the arch would be easy to knock down.
	But then again, he was only a human, whose only advantage seemed to be a magic sword that could kill Were-kin.  That would be no advantage against him.
	"I hope Haley managed to salvage something," Tarrin sighed.  "Is he going back to Dayis?"
	Dolanna shook her head.  "The inn was a total loss, and much of the reason he stayed there was because nobody knew the truth about him.  He told me he intends to relocate and open a new in elsewhere.  He hinted that he might do so here in Abrodar, though I doubt he would be happy here."
	"Why is that?"
	"Haley thrives in an atmosphere of intrigue and deception.  Such behavior is very rare here in Sharadar.  We are a very orderly and peaceful people, who do not scheme and plot to better our place in life.  The only scheming one finds here is in the nobility, and it is as nothing compared to other kingdoms."
	"Borrr-ring," Sarraya teased.
	"I guess we are boring to outsiders," she smiled.  "Many who visit here say that the people are as much a part of the scenery as the buildings, with almost as much personality.  But they do not understand the nuances of Sharadi culture, that is all."
	"You sound like a Sha'Kar," Kimmie chuckled.
	"Maybe now you understand why we and the Sha'Kar get along so well," she replied with that same smile.
	"At least you're not as arrogant as they are," Tarrin told her.
	"Old cultures breed old people, even when they're young," Sarraya pressed.  "You teach your kids how to be dusty old curmudgeons before they even start wondering what's under the clothes of the other gender."
	"As I said, few understand us," she said lightly, giving Sarraya a slight smile.
	Tarrin did understand, and in a way, his ability to speak Sharadi gave him that insight.  That, and his closeness to Dolanna.  The Sharadi were actually quite lively, personable people, but much like other old cultures, theirs was one almost drowned in tradition and custom that made them seem austere and regal, and not a little dried-up and boring.  But more than that, Tarrin knew that the Sharadi were a very subtle people.  By the merest lifting of an eyebrow or corner of her mouth, Dolanna displayed tremendous shifts in her emotions and mood, though the general expression of her face didn't change by a large degree.  These physical subtleties mirrored the great subtlety of the Sharadi language, where the mere shift of inflection in one word could alter the meaning of an entire sentence.  Their culture was much like their language, where small things were changed in small ways, but had great meaning to those who understood their significance.  But to someone outside of that understanding, one Sharadi would seem as dull and boring as another Sharadi.  Only when they were upset or under duress did Sharadi often display great emotion, and when they did, they made it count.  Dolanna had only lost her temper once since he knew her, but it was as impressive a tantrum as any that Tarrin had ever thrown, only without the widespread geographical devastation.  Almost like the bursting of a dam; the water ravaged everything in its path, and then once the lake was drained, it returned to calm steadiness.  The Sharadi were much the same way in that when they did release their emotions, they really let them go.
	What made Dolanna rather interesting was that she was one of the most forceful Sharadi Tarrin had ever known.  She did have a wider range of emotion about her, and her expression did change, but Tarrin now understood that she only did that when around northerners, an act that to her would be grand exaggeration, almost melodrama, but to the more emotional northerners, she would only seem less distant to them than she would if she acted like she did at home.  She had tried to adapt to the customs of the northern Tower, but didn't quite manage it.  Much like she had never managed to master the concept of shortcuts in language, which is why her Sulasian always sounded so formal.
	"She never will, Dolanna," Tarrin told her.
	"I rather doubt it.  She can barely hold a single thought in her head more than a minute," she answered in that same light voice.
	"Hey!" Sarraya said indignantly.  "I'm not that impulsive!"
	"Yes you are," several voices said in unison.
	"Hmph!" she snorted.  "You're all just jealous!"
	"Only in your own mind, bug," Jesmind told her languidly, leaning her head against Tarrin's shoulder.
	Kimmie yawned, then reached down and patted Rina's head tenderly, who had it in her mother's lap.  "I think I'm about ready to take a short nap," she said.  "All that food made me a little sleepy."
	"Well, I'm not sleepy," Jasana declared immediately.
	"I never said you were," she said with a smile.  "But I think I'll go put Rina down for a while, and catch a little nap myself.  Watch Tara for me?" she asked Tarrin.
	He nodded, then the door opened and Jula came in.  She shut it behind herself and blew out her breath, causing her bangs to rustle.  "What's the matter with you, cub?" he asked her.
	"I've been trying to find out what Alexis has planned," she replied.
	"Well, did you?" Sarraya asked.
	She shook her head.  "Whatever it is, she's got it under very tight wraps.  Not even Auli could find out, and Auli knows everything that goes on around here, I've discovered."
	"You were with Auli?" he asked.
	She nodded.  "I like her.  She's funny," she disclosed.
	Jesmind snorted, and her claws dug just a tiny bit into Tarrin's side.  Jesmind didn't like Auli because when Tarrin was human, she seduced him.  That made the Sha'Kar a possible competitor in her eyes, and since she wasn't a Were-cat, Jesmind didn't have to obey any niceties or customs concerning her.  Tarrin was usually careful to keep Jesmind and Auli either well separated or with several obstacles between them if they were in proximity to one another.
	As a friend, sometimes Auli was more trouble than she was worth.
	"Someone has to know," Tarrin reasoned.
	"Alexis probably made some ugly threats if anyone talked," Jula replied.
	"Just ask Phandebrass," Jasana offered.  "I heard you say that they talked to him about whatever it is they were doing."
	"He won't tell us," Tarrin frowned.
	"So?  Make him tell you," she said casually.
	"Phandebrass doesn't intimidate, cub," Jula told her with a smile.  "Anyone who does what he does for a living has nerves of steel, and besides, he's too familiar with Tarrin."
	"Then you do it," she concluded.  "He doesn't know you."
	"Actually, he does, and rather well," she countered.  "You forget, cub, I was in the Tower with him and the others while father was coming back across the desert.  Me and Phandebrass know each other very well."
	"Well, then Gramma can do it.  Nobody refuses Gramma."
	"That might work," Tarrin agreed after thinking a minute.
	"Why don't you ask me," Sarraya piped in, flitting down and waving her arms before his face.  "I can find out what's going on!"
	"You think you can?" Tarrin asked her.
	"Tarrin!  How quickly you forget!  Nobody can hide anything from a Faerie who has her mind set on finding out!" she teased with a smirk and a wink.
	"Alright then, Sarraya, let's see if you can back up your promises," he told her.
	"Hah!  You'll be eating those words when I get back!" she said smugly, then she faded from view even as the sound of her buzzing wings retreated towards the open window.
	"Think she can find out?" Kimmie asked, standing near the bedroom to where she had been carrying Rina.
	"She has a good chance," Tarrin admitted.  "Sarraya can be quite a spy when she's serious about it."
	Tarrin spent the rest of the already very late evening with family, but after they all turned in for short naps before the dawn, Tarrin found himself not ready to sleep.  The jump in time from Suld to Abrodar had messed up his internal sense of time, and besides, he really wasn't that sleepy.  He decided to go for a walk around the city in the comforting cover of night, but in order to get out of the Tower, he realized that he would need some way to get around unnoticed, without the fawning and bowing and all the attention that it would surely bring down on him.  The simplest way to do that was simply to change form, to shift into his fully human form and then simply walk out.  That was the manner in which he decided it would be best to proceed, and did so without too much trouble.  It had been quite a while since he had shifted into his human form, and he found it to be surprisingly pain free as he went from his room to the gates leading off the Tower's grounds.  He had done very well to adjust to the human shape in the past, and had built up quite a tolerance to it, but now it seemed even easier to him.
	He paused just outside the Tower's gates when he realized that it was the first time he had held the human form since his death and subsequent resurrection, and he now occupied a body that was made from him, but was not the original him.  It had taken him time to get used to this new body that wasn't new, or whatever it really was, since it always confused him whenever he tried to figure it out.  Maybe that period of adjustment had aided his ability to stave off the pain of holding a form that was no longer natural for his kind.
	Abrodar was a very large city, about half again as large as Suld, but the differences between the two were radical and unmistakable.  Suld was actually the older of the two cities, but its architecture was a chaotic clash of many different styles, and buildings there were torn down or destroyed as often as they were built.  But here in Abrodar, it seemed that the same buildings that had been constructed thousands of years ago were still standing.  Their architecture was bizarre, alien, and it all looked absolutely ancient, vaguely similar to the rugged construction of the ruins of Mala Myrr.  Had Abrodar been built by the Dwarves?  The city had been here during the Blood War, so it was entirely possible.  There were hints of Dwarven architecture in the buildings, with their oversized building stones and the columns and balconies that dominated them, the small, narrow windows and the strange semicircular sculptures over the doors of the buildings, a Dwarven custom of design where the glyph that represented the name of the family within was carved into a semicircular block over the door, inside a holy symbol of the Dwarven goddess of family and duty, whose task it was to watch over and protect those beyond the door.  That semicircle was one of the very rare instances of the use of a curved line in Dwarven architecture; actually, one of the rare uses of something not straight in their entire culture.  Their alphabet was nothing but straight lines and crisp, exacting, sharp angles, and their building philosophy was as angular as their writing.  But in this one recurring situation, they used a semicircle, and built around its top to level out the top of the wall above the door, working around that radical element introduced into their construction rather than altering the semicircular block.  It was one of the very rare situations where the ancient Dwarves worked around something.  Their usual method was to change the aberrant element to suit their own designs.  Perhaps the labor involved to work around the symbol of their goddess was itself an offering to her, a demonstration of their devotion by changing themselves in order to suit her desire.  It was entirely possible, as the Dwarves were an intensely devout race, unerrantly faithful to their nine gods.
	But on closer look at a shop, he saw that though the architecture was Dwarven, the construction was not.  The building was much newer than it appeared, and he realized that all buildings built in Abrodar adhered to the ancient architecture that dominated the city's skyline.  Where Suld had evolved over the centuries, Abrodar looked just as it had thousands of years ago because the Sharadi would not allow it to change.
	That was something of an insight into the Sharadi mentality, an ancient race with an ancient culture that was rigid and organized, but tended to reject change.  That inflexibility could be their fatal flaw in the future, he realized.  Animals that did not adapt to the changes of nature died out, while those that did survived.  If the Sharadi did not learn to change with the times, they would become a culture in danger of becoming extinct.
	But it was still beautiful, and Tarrin was reminded of the Dwarves just enough to wander much of the western sections of the city, nearer the river, before sunrise, where the larger and older buildings were located, comparing what he saw to the ancient illustrations he had seen in the decayed books of the Imperial Library and the ruins of Mala Myrr.  Tarrin even found a few ancient villas whose foundations had been laid before the Blood War, though the buildings themselves had been repaired and remodeled and patched so many times that literally all the stone and wood and tile and mortar that had orginally built them had all been replaced, but had not changed the basic design or appearance of the building.  They were links to the distant past, the last maintained vestiges of a lost race.  Tarrin wondered if the Sharadi who lived here knew that their city had originally been built by the Dwarves.
	In a way, the Sharadi resistance to change, in this one instance, pleased Tarrin a great deal.  The Dwarves were gone, but here, in Abrodar, one could walk the streets and see the legacy that they left behind.  It was quite fitting.
	Of course, the Sharadi didn't seem that much bigger than the Dwarves, so maybe ancient Dwarven architecture suited them, but for Tarrin it was bloody inconvenient.  The one time he decided to enter a building, a raucous tavern by the river's bank, just off the stout wharves they had built into the wide, slow-moving river, he almost had to go on all fours to get under the door's top.  Of course, all sound within absolutely stopped when the towering Were-cat literally crawled in under their door, then stooped to keep his head from banging against the ceiling, but he didn't really notice them.  His eyes were taking in the walls and doors of the common room, looking for evidence that the Sharadi had been faithful to Dwarven construction on the inside as well as the outside.  In this, he saw, they did change things.  The interior of the buildings was much different from a Dwarven building, meaning that they adhered to their ancient building appearances only on the outside.  They scrambled out of his way, staring at him with wide eyes, as he padded across the common room to inspect the plaster-coated far wall, plaster that showed signs of its age with many pits, stains, nicks, and scratches that had filled in with dirt over the years.  Tarrin shifted from the wall to the ceiling, seeing that it had been replaced recently, using the same type of stone as the outside but showing the relative shoddiness between the meticulous construction of the outside and the construction inside.  They went to great pains to make the outside perfect, but they weren't quite as demanding when it came to things that only they themselves would see.  He couldn't pin that attitude on all Sharadi, only the ones who had built the ceiling, but it was a valid observation nonetheless.
	He left as silently as he came, and left an utterly silent tavern behind him when he did so.  But he didn't remain alone for very long.  Not too long after leaving the tavern, a familiar scent touched his nose, and he saw a dark figure moving towards him from further up the street.  It was Haley, dressed in a rather dashing black waistcoat with no sleeves, a Shacan affectation, over a white silk shirt with flared sleeves and with delicate, almost gaudy lace at the neck and cuffs, flared black trousers tucked into highly polished black leather knee boots, and a graceful rapier hanging easily from a belt made from woven strands of gold inlaid into a sturdy, wide leather strap with a wolf's head in relief as the buckle, complete with a small emerald to serve as its eye.  A long, narrow-bladed dagger with a small basket-hilt rested in a sheath just over the rapier's mounting studs, the end of it resting lightly against the leather-covered scabbard of his rapier, a weapon that most would call a poinard, but the Shacans called a main gauche.  It was a fencer's dagger, used to complement the rapier in the off hand, primarily a defensive weapon, but still a weapon.  They were on the same side so Haley could use his free hand to help him draw his rapier, then slide it up and draw the main gauche in a single smooth motion.  He even wore a cape to complete his look of a Shacan Musketeer, a short waistcape that flared every time he turned and tended to float on the gentlest breeze.
	He raised his hand in greeting as they approached one another, then Tarrin turned a corner just before meeting him.  He fell into step beside the Were-cat easily.  "I wondered how long it would take you to come out," Haley said with a chuckle.  "It's not often that you can explore a city like this one."
	"Have you even been back to the Tower?" he asked.
	Haley shook his head.  "What in the Tower can compare to this?" he asked brightly, motioning with both hands to the city spread out before him.  "This is where the action is, my cousin, this is where the life is.  The Tower is a dusty old tomb compared to the life being lived out here."
	"I can't argue with that," Tarrin said honestly.  "Now I see why you don't stay with your family."
	"I guess I'm just too human for them," he chuckled ruefully.  "They never fail to amaze me, Tarrin.  They have such short lives, yet they do so much with them.  Humans never seem to stop from the day they're born to the day they die.  It's almost like they know they don't have much time, so they live every day to its fullest."
	"That can be as much a problem as an asset," he said.  "Sometimes they meddle in things they have no business being in.  Val was a good example of that."
	"True, and you can hate him for what he did--starting the Blood War and all--but you still can't help but admire him for his ambition, and you have to admit that he did some pretty impressive things before he became a god.  He built an empire from scratch and turned it into a force that only the Sharadi could match.  That's an accomplishment.  His only drawback was that eternal human weakness.  Greed."
	"Hate the message but not the messenger?"
	"Not exactly," he said quickly.  "I hate his memory for the destruction he wrought, but when you look before that, before greed and ambition turned him evil, you'll find that he was actually a pretty decent guy.  He was a great man whose legacy will forever be so tainted by his evil that it blots out the good that he managed to accomplish before hand.  But there was good in his history before he started his quest to rule the world."
	"You have a strange way at looking at history, Haley."
	"No, I just looked at all of it, Tarrin.  Not just those things that everyone else accepts.  I believe in seeing the whole picture, from both sides.  I've read some Valkari history books, and they're quite different than the history books most sages have now.  They show what went on in Valkar before Val went mad with power and started down the path that led to the Blood War."
	"I think I've had enough of talking about Val, Haley," he said wearily.
	"I guess you would," he agreed with a nod.  "Quite alot of bad blood there.  Sorry I brought it up."
	"That's alright.  Why are you out here dressed like a Shacan, Haley?  You stand out like a cannon in a ballroom, as Kerri would say."
	"I lived in Shac for thirty years, Tarrin," he laughed.  "I guess I've been nationalized."
	"That's a strange word."
	"It is, but it's as good a description as any."
	"Dolanna told me what happened.  Do you plan to go back to Dayis?"
	"I won't be able to go back for a while," he sighed somberly.  "I had to reveal myself to deal with Stragos, and they'll talk about that for a good five years."
	"I'm surprised you had so much trouble with a human, Haley," Tarrin said reproachfully.
	"This was no ordinary human, cousin," Haley said seriously.  "Whoever trained him did not leave any holes in his education, he was damn smart, and he had several actual magical items with him.  Between his skills, that magic, and that damned sword of his, I was put on the defensive from the get-go and stayed there almost until the end."
	"What kind of magic?"
	"Well, he had an amulet that looked like an eye on a chain that made everyone see me as a Were-wolf instead of as a human," he said.  "I remember that the eye opened as soon as he looked at me, and everyone started screaming and pointing.  He had a metal glove on his free hand that shot fire and lightning out of it.  That's how my inn got burned down.  He had on this silver-plated armor that caused a jolt up my arm every time I made contact with it with my sword and main gauche, almost like it was lightning flying up my arms.  It hurt so much, I couldn't bring myself to try to touch his armor with anything I was holding.  Then there was that sword," he growled.  "It glowed from the instant he drew it, and it hurt like bloody blue blazes if he so much as slid the flat of the blade across the back of my hand.  I think the sword and armor were specifically made to battle Were-kin.  I could sense the pure hatred that seemed to emanate from both the sword and the armor as soon as we started fighting."
	"How did you beat him?"
	"It wasn't a matter of beating as much as it was a controlled retreat," he admitted with a frown.  "I was pretty ineffective against him, even when I shifted into my hybrid form, but he was no match for my Druidic magic.  As soon as I managed to get enough of a cushion to bring it to bear against him, I had his chafed little backside right at the end of my spear; so the Ungardt say," he said with a smile.  "After I dropped a building on him, he decided I wasn't a very fun playmate anymore and managed to disappear in the all the dust and confusion."
	Tarrin actually laughed.  "No wonder the Council of Hierarchs summoned you."
	He winced.  "They had quite a few unflattering things to say to me, that's for sure," he admitted.
	"I didn't think you had a building in you.  I thought you'd be more around the area of a large cart, or maybe a good solid carriage."
	He laughed.  "I didn't either, but fighting for your very life sometimes shows you that you can exceed your limitations," he agreed.  "He wouldn't have been impressed if I sent a horse cart flying at him, but he was very impressed when I uprooted a small house and sent it flying down the street."
	"I think most people would be," he said dryly.
	"Outside of a few certain exceptions," he chuckled.
	"I'll be the people in that house were impressed."
	Haley laughed deeply.  "Tarrin, at that moment, they were probably the most impressed people on the entire island," he said richly.  "Lucky for me that they survived to fully appreciate how impressed they were.  If I'd have killed them, I don't think the Hierarchs would have let me off with a stern scolding."  He glanced towards the east.  "Well, it's coming on dawn, and we're supposed to leave at daybreak.  I think we'd better wander back towards the Tower, or we'll make everyone very cross with us."
	"They can wait all day," Tarrin said absently.  "They're certainly not leaving without me."
	Haley gave him a look, then laughed once more.

	The trip back reinforced an old acquaintance he'd had with Haley, and actually caused it to change into something approaching friendship.  Haley was a very smart, droll fellow with a rich sense of humor, exquisite manners, and a razor-sharp mind.  That was why he liked Dayis so much, and it was an environment that suited him.  What likened Tarrin to him was that he didn't make a fuss about him.  To Haley, Tarrin was just Tarrin, not an earth-shaking magical force, not a creature to be feared or to hold in awe.  Haley treated him like a person, and Tarrin warmed to him greatly because of that.  Haley remembered Tarrin from their first meeting, and marveled at how much he had changed, but not so much that it changed who he was.  Tarrin remembered Haley from their first meeting, and found that he was very much like the Haley he had seen just before they left his inn, after the Were-wolf had warmed up to the idea of having a Rogue in his home.  Tarrin had been impressed by Haley then, and found a little respect for him.  They had both built on those impressions of each other and found common ground, and it was a common ground that suited both of them.  Tarrin ignored the fact that Haley once threatened to call Triana down on him, and Haley ignored the fact that Tarrin was a Were-cat, a traditional enemy of the Were-wolves.
	Haley joked about that as they returned to the Tower, about how the world would end if a cat and a dog ever became friends.
	But from the way it was looking, the world just might be about to play its finale.
	It would take a little while for Tarrin to come to trust Haley enough to consider him a friend, but he did like the Were-wolf, and he knew from past experience that that was the first step.  Tarrin wouldn't turn his back on Haley or trust him, but he enjoyed his company and thought him to be a rather funny person.  For Tarrin to accept Haley as he did his other friends, it would take time and patience.
	Though Tarrin seemed much different to those around him, he was still feral, and always would be.

	It turned out that there in fact were some things that a determined Faerie could not find out.
	Sarraya had come up empty in her quest to discover what Alexis' secret was, mainly because almost everyone was asleep when she decided to find out.  All she could really do was what Jula and Auli did, search the grounds to try to find the vehicle by which they were going to travel.  And just like Auli and Jula, Sarraya found nothing.
	They all debated what it could be as they gathered for an intimate breakfast devoid of outsiders, but it was still a rather large group.  It was a chance for them to catch up with Dolanna and what she'd been doing since returning to Abrodar, which wasn't very much.  She'd mainly been acting as a teacher and translator for the Sha'Kar, training the humans in the Sha'Kar language and serving more or less as Alexis' First, as Ianelle did Jenna.  The Sorcerers in the Tower resented Dolanna for that, as she was seen as something of a wild element within the Tower's political landscape.  She didn't jockey and jostle for position as they did; she didn't create a pool of friends and a base of relative power to impress the other katzh-dashi and therefore earn respected positions within the Tower as they had; and she didn't slave and toil within the Tower, making herself look wise and important as they had.  She hadn't even asked for the job.  Alexis had simply informed the Tower in an open Council, where the Council met in the main hall with the rest of the katzh-dashi attending, that Dolanna would assume the newly created position of First, the Keeper's right hand.  Dolanna was even more surprised than the powermongers that were outraged by the announcement.  Just as the Council in Suld had done when Myriam Lar stepped down and personally named Jenna as her successor, the power-player katzh-dashi in the Abrodar Tower had a collective apoplexy and were extremely put out by the appointment.  But unlike in Suld, the Goddess did not have to personally intervene, mainly because it was not a retirement from the position of greatest authority as it had been in Suld.  Alexis was still the Keeper, and she brought her power down on the whiners like a sledgehammer, assigning anyone who objected too vociferously to what was called "boot duty," travelling Sharadar and the neighboring kingdoms of Darrigon, Vendar, Kypernius, and covertly doing the same in Stygia, which was an ancient rival and enemy of Sharadar, searching out youths with the inherent aptitude for Sorcery.  Unlike in Suld, this was seen as the lowest and most menial task a Sorcerer could perform, something given to neophytes who had only just completed the Initiate, and Alexis' heavy-handed tactic silenced all criticism almost immediately.
	Dolanna wasn't very comfortable in the position, but it did smooth things over with the 