'I made sure that only one of us left the ruins of Yatavas that day. There is little more to be said on the subject, and much else that is more pressing. I, as well as many others, I am sure, will examine my guilt at a later date.'

'How uncomfortably perceptive you are, young lady. Herne. Leave us.'

She shoots him a look but does as he asks, shutting the door behind her.

'Five.' he pauses for a moment, as if at a loss for words, but Miria's words, even through translation, brooked no argument.'Five came back. Not four. And... One of them wore my face. We believed that only... Well. I did what I had to.'

'When we left the beast, no copies came with us - and there were many that could have, if they had so wished. We assumed it was impossible for them to exist outside of the creature at the same time as another one of us - for two duplicates to survive, or a duplicate and the master it was made from. I knew-'

Shawe cuts himself short, as if afraid of what he is going to say, and then abruptly changes tack.

'And yes, Jack... poison, fire, made strong enough... these could act as distractions, allow you time to reach the heart. But what is more important - to burn the beast itself, or to burn the antibodies that help it to feed? if you clear them then you'll be far safer once you are inside the stomach - although the beast does have other methods of defending itself - and your path to your comrade, if he still lives, will be made all the safer.

'And as for why it did not duplicate you, or maybe did but simply not to the extent that it duplicated others...' he turns to Roger, 'Is a mystery to me, although one that I would very much like to solve.'

'Two? Ha, I'm sorry, but you must be mistaken. Such a thing is impossible.'

Shawe looks decidedly uncomfortable at the thought.

'Well, we were lucky enough to make it back to the mouth... But if you did that, you would simply be back between planes. As for widening the tear... It is possible, in theory, but I can't know for certain. I would need to run tests, and I would need... Assistance, from my old colleagues.'

He turns to Sallrana.

'And Lady, with a beast such as this very little is certain. Perhaps you are more than a copy. I would not speculate on such a matter.'

'When I was there, the stomach was no city - it seems to have drawn part of itself from the ruins of Yatavas, an echo of the last time it feasted. And if it has reproduced the city with any kind of faith then... yes, it will burn. But you'd need fire hotter than any I've seen to act as you intend, to survive the draining influence of that dread place. If you could secure that... I am thinking, remembering. There was a plan that we had wished to try, but had lacked the materials for - and time was of the essence then, far more so than it is now. Give me a moment...' Shawe begins to rummage through a desk in the corner of the tower room, spilling scrolls and odd accoutrements onto the floor at his feet.

As he searches he answers you, Rickonni, although he is distracted.

'It is not something I care to remember too clearly but, if you are so determined... we sacrificed ourselves. Hundreds of ourselves, to let four escape.

He draws a slim leather-bound book from the recesses of the drawer and throws it to you, Jack, as he continues speaking.

'When the schultenbrak ingests you, you pass through a planar boundary - a carefully evolved planar boundary designed to split and refract an individual, creating tens, or even hundreds, of copies of them for the schultenbrak to digest at leisure. Most who enter are unaware of this - they believe the others that they see there to be phantoms, or illusions, but they are all quite real. Many of them are not perfect, although they don't often live long enough to find that out - their bodies altered slightly, their minds jumbled. There will always be one that is the most true - the master copy, if you will - and if that one escapes the others disappear, robbed of their template. The schultenbrak will not kill master copies until it has eliminated all of the lesser fragments - it would be killing the golden goose, so to speak.

... and by the time that we had reached a place we could push back out of the stomach, the schultenbrak had worked out what we were doing - in some base. animal way, at least. Suddenly the attacks were focused, out of a crowd of hundred only eight targeted, and with a renewed ferocity, a sense of purpose. We knew then who would live and who would die - the heart was passed to me, a master copy, as scores of myself died to shield me. it was the same with the others - and four of them fell, with each of their deaths all of their copies dissolving like sand.'

Shawe has stopped rummaging now, and stands stooped, staring in front of him at the dresser.

'That, Mr Rickonni, is how I escaped - by watching a thousand living, thinking, breathing beings die, and hundreds of them with my very own face.

As I said... I do not recommend it.'

Upon his return a minute later Shawe takes your card, Sallrana, and calmly crumples it in his fist and drops it into the fire as he listens to your questions - his jocular, arrogant demeanour has not returned, and instead he seems resolute and cold. He even nods in agreement as John talks of punishment.

At your discussion of poison he rubs his chin thoughtfully.

'It could work, but... No. There are creatures that live inside the stomach, that weed out potential harm. But if...'

A light seems to go on behind Shawe's eyes and he began to pace the room, gesturing expansively.

'There is a creature, one of the... Antibodies, that you released into the world through the gate. And one of your own still inside, and a shard of schultenbrack heart in my study - old, but still beating, still living...'

'This may be possible after all.'

'... And as for how we escaped... With a distraction that weighed heavily upon us - a method I would not recommend if we could find any other.'

'This is my punishment... the Schultenbrack, bleeding through into my adopted home as surely as it infiltrated my birth-city. And now I am faced with the same problem as I faced twenty years ago - the heart must be destroyed, but it is guarded by a force that could turn back an army.

And I don't know what to do.'

Shawe's head sinks into his hands for a few moments, and his hounds whine as if they understand his dilemma. Abruptly he stands, asking for a minute to compose himself, and trudges heavily up the stairs to the next floor of his tower, leaving you to talk amongst yourselves before you have the chance to ask any questions.

If you're going to plan, now's the time to do it.

'You're new here, so I don't expect any of you to have seen it - the ruins that stand silently in place of my birth-city. But I have seen it often, that shell of a place, and it is a reminder of what we did.

And you brought it back here.'

'I was wrong. Whatever is happening out there is not because of the schultenbrack - it is because of me. the schultenbrack is merely an object of retribution, something to restore balance, and you are merely caught in the middle.

We tried the first way, and we failed. It had adapted to our streets and roofways, had turned from a rare but deadly annoyance to an experienced hunter. Where once it had waited for prey, it stalked. And with every person that it took, it grew stronger. We tried... everything. Everything we could think of, before resorting to our final solution.'

All hints of his jovial nature gone, Shawe suddenly appears to be much older than he is, although little but his attitude has changed. The dying firelight coupled with the blue glow from the sea-facing windows have turned his face pallid, and his back is hunched as he sits.

'So,' he says earnestly, his gaze sweeping all of you, 'Tell me everything. Everything that has happened since you met this... Schultenbrack.'

Now, what would be more important to me than a complete re-telling of your story is actually simply a list of what you don't tell Shawe, if anything. Things you leave out on purpose, let me know - otherwise I'll assume you tell him everything that's happened since meeting the Schultenbrack.

'I would speak to you in private, if I might, all of you who have seen this... Schultenbrack. I must... I have questions. Important... Questions.'

He indicates a tower overlooking the docks, obviously asking your group to follow.

Now, he doesn't know that Rick, Miria and the two men you just rescued never saw the inside of the Schultebrack - whoever follows him is up to you guys.

'The name's Shawe, lad, Tarkin Shawe. I'm well known in these parts and I, in turn, know these parts quite well. And I can assure you, whatever that is,' the man points toward the tower still slowly unfolding from the roof of the nearby warehouse, 'It is not our old friend the Schultenbrack. And believe me, I am exceedingly sure of this... seeing as it was at my hand that the schultenbrack met its end, more than twenty years ago.'

He stands there with his arms crossed, a thoughtful look on his face and a sense of easy arrogance emanating from him.

'And you can help me, first of all, by telling me how you came to be here. You stink of the arcane, if you don't mind me saying. In fact you, my lady, more potently than most. And,' he sniffs the air theatrically, 'Unless I've missed my guess, at least one of you has paid a visit to Old Arms recently. Your names are all well and good, but... this is my city, and I like to know what's going on.'

'She was saying, dear boy, that the Schultenbrack is dead. And she's entirely right, despite your rather... vocal assertions to the contrary. Good morning, Hern.'