He could see that the elderly man had the same acceptance of the dangers associated with his calling as any warrior. This was a life or death game the... were playing. The seriousness of the situation reminded him of the rattle he had heard across the hall when entering his room. He asked, “Who’s across the hall?”“They’re my bodyguards. I have three of them in the three rooms across the hall. They were not happy about the fact that my room had a door they couldn’t guard.”“I can imagine.”“Speaking. We have the contract for collecting new arrivals and taking them to Admin for processing. There can be several Landerships each day. This one is out of the normal sequence. Are you special or something?”“Nothing special. We were invited by The Personalia to come to Rehome to get married.”“They invited you to come here to get married? That is unusual; do you have special talents to make you valuable to the colony?”“That may be it. We: me and the girls are mostly university students, but we ran. As expected, he did not survive the questioning which lasted nearly seven hours. We dumped his body in his bedroom before setting fire to his house. We recovered the log book and made sure that there were no captives on the premises before Billy made use of his artistic talents. There was nothing but a pile of ashes left by the time the FD managed to put the fire out. There was considerable shock when a body was found in the bed, and the fire was attributed to an accident with a cigarette.We. His misery had cut through my soul from thebeginning, and though everyone seemed pleased at how much better he seemedto be doing, with me as a new friend, I knew he could never live a normallife. I didn't consider my life ruined as Jakob's was; changed, certainly,but not destroyed. His was just tragic. So I needed to recover my magic. Iwould have to be re-empowered by drawing close to the mysterious Orb.I was convinced the risks were worth it for Jakob. Getting out of thecity, once my power was.