((OOC:  Phew, took a breather there to get some "behind-the-scenes" stuff worked out.  Okay, back to business!))<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>((OOC:  I'll assume Sara's already made it over to the Palace sewer.))<br/><br/>Halvorson heard Chiro on the radio and was about to reply when Feign came swinging around into the tunnel.  He jumped out of the way just in time, and eyed Feign warily as the young man made his comment and walked into the tighter confines of the masonry.  He looked at Sara and Baz in a moment of hesitation, and then caught the medic's hand as it was hung around the wall.  With a stumble, the medic hoisted himself around and into the tube.  After another moment, O'Toole was across.  Halvorson nodded to himself, then made his way to the front of the group, deepest into the tunnel, pressing forcibly past Feign and eyeing him for a moment.<br/><br/>He keyed the radio and spoke into his collar, "Foxtrot, we're damn close.  We'll call when things are about to go down.  That'll be your signal to go.  Over."  He let the radio hang and looked at Feign.  "Damn right things are gonna get harder.  Get to the back.  You're on rear guard.  No gun plus no real armor equals the safest spot in the group, got me?"  He looked at the others.  "Find a grate in the ceiling.  We go through that, we're in the catacombs.  Then we just find the stairs."  He led the way onward, the musty smell and the trickling water beneath his feet the only things he sensed besides the bare tunnel walls.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The estate of Lady Maeve Blotar stood three stories high, a shattered masterpiece of carpentry and architecture.  The deep violet paint of the siding, once tenderly weathered by time, was now marred with bullet-holes, scorches, and closer the ground level - blood.  The homestead-like facade of the house stood only a dozen feet or so back from the edge of the circle drive, with a large open garage attached on the left, holding only one battered wreck of what had once been an impressive luxury sedan.  All of the windows were shattered.  Some shutters hung askew.  The grand porch had had the columns supporting its roof severed, and bare woodwork was exposed where the roof had collapsed forward to cover the door... but the roof itself lay in shards across the drive.  It looked as though the occupants of the mansion had tried to seal themselves inside by deliberately cutting down the porch's roof.<br/><br/>The third floor of the mansion was marked by two sections of the house jutting up above the second floor, a flat balcony connecting them atop the roof of the second floor.  Dreamer would remember that balcony, how Maeve would use it to look out over her fields behind the house, then turn to see the nearby skyline of the small town.  The slave's quarters could be seen off to the right and a few dozen yards back from the circle drive - they looked to be relatively unscathed.  Back, behind the house, the peak of a few grain silos could be seen.  A wide service road led from beside the garage to a near-distant barn and the service roads for the fields.<br/><br/>A big, white bed sheet was hanging from the rails of the balcony, flapping in the errant breeze, tied so that it hung flat against the front of the mansion.  Upon it was the design of the pentacle - the religious symbol corrupted into a new meaning.  Below it, the word "HUMANITY" raged in blood.<br/><br/>Men and women sat about the porch or lay in the grass, all of them armed somehow.  Some had just a dinner knife.  Others had scythes and shears.  A few had guns.  They were chatting, drinking from bottles - liquor pilfered from Maeve's collection.  Most were drunk.  A few were trying their hands at smoking for the first time, coughing around stolen cigarettes.  They paid the station wagon and its occupants only the mild interest of those who thought themselves invincible.<br/><br/>There was a thick, sharp stick driven into the earth beside the porch.  A bull-fur's head was jammed onto the end.  Flies buzzed about it, alighting on its glazed, open eyes and the moist coldness of its lolling tongue.  The grass below it was dark with drippings.  The face, distorted as it was with pain and death, was still recognizable.  Lakran Hereford.<br/><br/>And the pentacle on the bed sheet was not drawn in blood.  The lines of the once-sacred star were stitched sloppily onto the fabric, little pieces of twine and thread holding wet entrails into the design.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>The medic gently but firmly pried Emiko's fingers from his arm, freeing it to finish working on her wrist.  First Sergeant Millhouse breathed air that seemed somehow colder.  He looked at Jenten, his gaze made of stone.<br/><br/>"If you know this monster, you should tell someone in charge everything you can about him," he said through set teeth.  "Then we get you somewhere safe.  The Colonel said your leader would be returned to you.  I don't know what that means, but it's safe to say you guys are valuable to the Resistance.  We have tons of hiding places.  We'll get you to safety."  He drew close to Emiko, putting his hand on her cheek at the risk of being forward.  "You're the pacifist, remember?  You're not supposed to fight anyway."<br/><br/>The medic tied off the bandage on her arm and moved to Jenten.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Merelli was soundly unconscious within Iln, unable to feel the shifting of her guts as she was fed a hearty meal of Blood Cultists by the medics.<br/><br/>Janus was on the tails of the retreating cultists, felling them one by one as they pulled back into the alleys across from the park.  Then the confines became tight again and the cultists pressed their advantage of numbers, forcing him back.  He slashed and slashed, openly drinking of the spray in the air.  Something tugged at his mind through the rage, which was beginning to abate.  He didn't see Heretic.  Where had Heretic gone?<br/><br/>The Resistance soldiers, losing steam in their counterattack, was clogging into the alleys in pursuit of the Cult.  Some low-level officers tried to lead a flanking movement around the block to the next street, but were headed off by a more steadfast clump of cultists.  A stalemate was gestating again - something had to turn the tide.<br/><br/>-----<br/><br/>Lady Alhanda realized that she had not yet slept.  Her husband, probably wandering the Palace as he was apt to, was absent from her bed, allowing her the consolation of a quiet space.  She dared not rest as her city burned, but a moment of pause in a calmer area would not hurt.  Alhanda sat cross-legged on the floor of her bedroom, folding her hands in her lap and gazing down at them, collecting her thoughts as she breathed evenly.<br/><br/>She had just finished organizing the orderly restructuring of Kazmer's transportation system to allow easy access for the military.  Long-dormant counter-invasion plans, originally drawn against a hypothetical incursion by troops from House Javier, were being put into action.<br/><br/>House Blotar had fallen utterly silent.  Her staff's attempts to raise them on radio or via phone were unsuccessful.  All of the Internet servers for that realm were down.  House Javier was not being cooperative in revealing any intelligence that they had.  It was frustrating.<br/><br/>To the east, the desert city-states were largely unresponsive, as usual.  Those backwards holes in the sand paid tribute to her and not much else.  She was thankful she had not bothered providing military protection in return.<br/><br/>The only chance she had of knowing anything outside the boundaries of Kazmer came from her spies and operatives worldwide.  Sporadic reports had come in from some - worldwide resistance to fur superiority was occurring.  Her agent in Fort Blotar had not reported in since the previous evening.<br/><br/>K5 News was running around the clock, trying to piece together even less information than she had.  Their reports said the human rebels controlled roughly 10% of the city.  Her own intelligence told worse - 17%.  Her troops had solidified fronts and were moving reserves in, replacing ravaged police and standing army units, but the humans were ferocious.  They did not know honor.  They fought with whatever they could find, using surprise tactics, striking from concealed positions and stripping the dead.  A war against an honorable foe she could fight - that was what she knew.  A war against apparent chaos was much more difficult to control.<br/><br/>Through the chaos, glints of order were coming through.  The humans were wearing distinguishing uniforms that separated them from the ordinary slaves.  They wore badges, apparently indicating ranks.  Her technicians were locating radio transmissions -<span style="font-style: italic">encrypted</span>radio transmissions.  They seemed to pick high-value targets: police stations, army barracks, critical road choke points.  They avoided attacking civilians or civilian targets, solely focusing on the enforcers of her rule.<br/><br/>The humans were making public displays of voring furs.  This had many in her administration shocked.  Humans were genetically unable to perform vore.  That was what made them inferior.  Furs were the superior members of the food chain.  The fact that these humans now had the secret to vore meant that they had gone to great lengths - even to tamper with Creation - to destroy their masters.<br/><br/>Then there were the disappearances.  Important furs like local police chiefs, company administrators, even some mid-level military officers had vanished, even well behind the front lines.  Her staff had found up to thirty furs gone - simply vanished without a trace from their homes or never seen again when they had left work the previous evening.  Gaps in her command structure made it difficult to preserve order, but so far the ones that were gone could be replaced with relative ease.  Undoubtedly these were well-planned and coordinated assassinations, or kidnappings.  The humans were dismantling the hierarchy of House Shenzai with the sophistication of a surgeon.<br/><br/>How could Lord Asturi have been so overbearing?  If Alhanda could not have seen this level of organization among a human populace brought to heel for generations, how could he have crushed his own uprising so quickly?  All reports coming from House Javier were of utter victory, with sporadic outbreaks of resistance being mopped up easily.  She knew better.  An insurgency this well-planned could not have been crushed in one fell swoop.  Lord Asturi would have problems for generations to come.<br/><br/>Saller Outpost, to the south along House Shenzai's border with the untamed Arennor Plain, was quiet and safe.  Clent Station, to the west, on the edge of the Salesh Flatlands that separated House Shenzai from House Blotar, was equally secure.  It was obvious the humans had prioritized Kazmer as the hub of power in the region.  She had to play with them some more.  Let the humans attack.  Let them think they were winning.  When she had learned enough about them from their own actions, as well as any prisoners she took, she would completely eradicate them.  These things took time.  A cancer required a patient doctor to be treated.  Her city would recover, and she would still have time to bear a daughter to pass it on to.