Today is the day. Vayak and his people set out with Okorion a few hours ago, after giving you a map to find the battlefield. It wasn't made totally clear how you would leave the Phelgon estate without being seen; it turns out that this is not a problem. One of the cultists staying behind happily shows you to a silver-rimmed door, behind which lies another oddity. From the other end, you can look back to see that doorway standing by itself one end of a darkened glade. The lush greenery smells of water and earth, and insects chirp against the light of a silver orb hanging in the sky, like one of the eyes of Garmera, but with no wolf in sight. Instead, the stars surround that sphere with impunity. An identical door waits at the opposite end, but your escort has already left after wishing you luck, assuming that you know what to do.

The other door opens, and on the other side lies the mundane counterpoint to the previous scenery; a maintanence shed, in one of Si En Kelar's many public parks. The door looks the same on this side, but has been concealed; you have to move aside some shabby wood paneling to exit completely. That said, once on the other side, you can see that the park is almost empty, despite the otherwise jam-packed nature of the city. Everyone must be elsewhere, and whatever else that means, at least nobody is watching.

Thanks to the lack of crowds, you make good time. Along the way, you discover where at least some of the missing people are: pressed in close behind either a wall of mercenary and retainer steel, or a similar one made of city guardsmen. So far, it appears to be relatively tame, with insults and screams being flung, but it doesn't look like it will be long before stones enter the picture. You see them at the far end of an avenue as you cross, a mass of sentient beings soon to go critical. This scene is repeated elsewhere, even as the city blocks become shabbier and poorer. By the time you arrive at the ramshackle Tsam district, you've witnessed three different incidents brewing, and each one on more dangerous ground. In the richer areas, things are largely stone, tile and metal. In these less well-off places, though, more and more wood is used in the construction, and the last incipient riot was taking place in what might as well have been a sawmill, for how easy it might be for a spark to catch. The same goes for your own location, which seems to have been built only halfway congruent with the ground beneath it. Large sections of it are clearly built on wooden scaffolds surrounding large pits or other terrain difficulties. Altogether, it gives the appearance of a thouroughly disreputable and unsafe locale. Obviously this is where you were meant to go.

As you approach the battle site, you begin to hear shouts of an altogether different nature, as cultists bark angry orders at what sounds like a group of civilians, judging from the distress in their voices.

You both make it to the top without seeming to attract attention. From this vantage, you can see a number of cultists, masked and hooded, as well as what appear to be a number of actual wolves, following members of the cult around and snarling at the hostages. Even from where you are, Ra'ven, you can feel something off about them, like something within them has been replaced by mania.

At the root of one of the longer jetties, where a dubious junker of a skyship waits, you can see a particularly large cultist shoving Professor Okorion about, laughing roughly. The voice and build make it fairly obvious that this is Vayak. The other captives watch as the old man has his feet kicked out from under him, sending him to the boards, and Vayak casually steps on Okorion's ankle, eliciting a groan of pain. He laughs, though you're not sure how much real humor is being had. Then, as you move across the roof, gaining a better view, you can see that, in addition to the civilian dockworkers and locals, four guards have also been captured. Three of them have been disarmed and badly beaten; their wounds are being tended to by a young man in the crowd. The fourth is simply a corpse now, and has been shoved up against the far wall, away from the others. He must have resisted a little too hard.