The longer Uriel was awake, the more things he saw and heard and the longer he had to think, the more he began to think that his situation was a lot direr than he had first realised. The last thing he remembered was standing outside the tower, as the black cloaked figure stepped out and approached them; after that he was awake in that cell, not even a feeling or darkness or a sense of time passing. It was like he’d blinked and suddenly he was somewhere else.

He had been taken captive, that much was obvious, but the question was where he was being held. The king’s dungeons under the castle should be as much rubble as the rest of the stronghold and he was fairly certain no prison in Averne had magic staves protecting their cells; unless the Church was secretly employing a Witch to secure their prisoners which was just hypocritical enough for him to consider it a possibility.

So maybe he was being held in the tower itself, that edifice of black rock that fell from the skies like judgement itself. It would explain the strange magic and the abomination that was now shambling around the room, but that didn’t explain his fellow prisoners. He turned around the room and examined them one by one; the man who had left to check the storeroom seemed normal enough as did the other men, even the newcomer in the bird mask. But the others…

Folks with bird wings didn’t exist where he came from, not even in stories; he’d been to the far reaches of the kingdom and even the most superstitious, those who spoke of monsters and impossible things in the woods and the swamps never said anything about people with wings. The metal girl was like a doll come to life, something that shouldn’t be possible without a Witches influence but he’d never seen one so intelligent or convincingly alive before. Then of course there was the walking corpse.

The metal girl and the masked doctor were talking by the beds and Uriel listened in to their conversation curiously while trying not to look like he was paying attention. Every other word the doctor said was another thing Uriel had never heard of. The Realm and the Blessed Isle? The Thirteen Great Houses? The Maker? The First Age and the Golden Lords? Granted the kingdom of Averne didn’t cover the entire world and it was possible these things existed and he just didn’t know about them, but that still raised some very worrying questions about just what had happened to him after that tower fell.

With a sigh Uriel walked over to one of the tables and threw his sword down on its surface with a clatter. [color=ed1c24]“While we’re waiting for those two to get back is anyone else starting to wonder just where exactly we are? I don’t mean what this place is, but I’d like to know that as well. I mean the fact that I’ve travelled the width and breadth of my kingdom and I’ve never heard tell of people with wings, or automatons, or walking corpses. I’ve never heard of the Maker, the Second, the Body of Kazzok, or anything else you people have mentioned.”[/color] Turning to face the others as he spoke Uriel pointed at Pox, Lia and Nale in turn as he listed the things they had said. [color=ed1c24]“I’ve never seen magic like those locks on our cells and I’d never seen an abomination like [i]that thing[/i] until I saw a tower fall from the sky and everyone started dying.”[/color] Uriel paused here, seeming to lose some steam as he reached the end of what he had to say. After a moment of silence he turned to face the stranger, taking a couple of steps in his direction. [color=ed1c24]“So, since you seem to know enough about this place to break us out of it; where the fuck are we?”[/color]