Lightsbane led me past the gates and through the warren of unfamiliar streets. It didn't take me long to understand that we were not moving toward the archives or libraries that might be kept closer to the center of the city.

No small part of me was concerned that she was attempting to waylay me, for purposes carnal or murderous. I channeled my inner Olaf and reminded myself that I was Sword. I was a Griidlord. I allowed that confidence to express itself in how I carried myself. I walked behind her with quiet purpose.

Old residential streets stretched around us. We were in the outer sector of the city where there was no order. Evening was creeping in, and the smell of woodsmoke and burning coal drifted to me.

I noticed Cleveland colors and flags hanging in the windows of this street. She saw me noticing and said, "This is where you'll mostly find old timers, survivors of the old city. There are fewer and fewer of them. They never let go of their old home."

I said, "And you?"

She walked on. "I was a child when the storm came. Baltimore is the only home I've ever really known. It's the city where I was Chosen. The city I've fought for."

I said, "If there is such sentiment for Cleveland, why was this new city named after the new Tower? Why take new colors? This could have been New Cleveland."

She was firm, fierce even. "We wandered years in the wastes after our city was laid to rubble. We had to escape a land infested with fresh hordes of Fiends. Small bands of survivors, like the one I belonged to, fought or scrabbled our way out of the city. We met with more bands and combined, and tried to stay together. Some left in small groups, settled in other cities. But the greatest part of us stayed together. We sought shelter in other lands, the Burgh, Cincy. We were rejected. No city wanted to spend the resources on us. We were cursed—our city had been felled by the Oracle. We were poor and hungry and nothing but a burden."

We turned down a side street, smaller and narrower. The smell of urine and waste assaulted me.

She said, "So we wandered, seeking a new home. None expected another Tower. What we hoped for was just good land somewhere free of Fiends and harassment. But we were chased from lands encroaching on the other territories, driven east further every year, toward the sea. Our men lent themselves to the armies of the other cities, trading their lives for coin needed to feed our masses. We grew hard, Blood Prince. We eked out our survival. When the Oracle rewarded our grit with a new Tower, a new city, a fresh start, there was a sentiment as you described it. A desire to remake old Cleveland here."

I said, "But you didn't."

She shook her head, stopping at the door of a small house. The paint was flaking away, the wood beneath long succumbed to the beginnings of rot. The little window by the door was greasy and dark.

Standing in front of the door, she finished, "After ten years wandering and hardening ourselves, there were enough of us who felt we'd become something different in the wilds. We wanted to leave old Cleveland in its grave. We'd been born again as something new. Hard, successful, strong. We wanted to leave behind the people who had begged at the gates of other cities."

I nodded slowly, understanding.

She rapped on the door.

When there was no response, she simply turned the handle and pushed her way in. I followed. The interior reeked of damp and mold. It was a hovel. What furnishings there were were simple and cluttered with old bottles and unwashed dishes. A meager fire crackled in its place. By the dingy window, a table was cluttered with charts, maps, stacks of papers, and scraps of scribbled notes.

An old man sat by the fire. He barely bothered to turn his head to notice us. One arm dangled between his legs, loosely holding a bottle. The other arm rested on his thigh, ending in a steel hook rather than a hand. The man was disheveled, gray, and far from sober.

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"Ravyn." He said it with neither pleasure nor displeasure, just stating the obvious.

She said, "Arnie, I've brought someone to see you."

He turned his gaze to me. I might have expected some reaction. I was, after all, a Griidlord—the Sword of Boston—appearing at his door without announcement. He only cocked an eye with leery suspicion.

She said, "He's come looking for stories of the Storm. I thought you could make yourself useful and blather on about them to someone who actually cared for a change."

He slowly drew a small tin cup from a table by his chair and spat a stream of tobacco juice into it. Well, mostly into it. A substantial smear hit the side of the cup and dripped to the floor.

He spoke in a voice harrowed by age and wizened by things seen. "And what would you want to know about those dark days?"

I was caught off guard. I hadn't come to the city expecting to interview a survivor. I didn't know where to start.

I said, "Whatever you can tell me…"

Lightsbane corrected me. "He wants to know about the goings-on. The cult."

The sagging face of the old man brightened at once. A light came to eyes that I had moments ago taken to be long extinguished. It wasn't joy, but zealousness I saw there.

"You want to know about the cult?"

I nodded. I didn't know what I wanted to know.

He said, "Well sit down. Want a drink?"

He didn't offer me a glass, just held the bottle out to me. I shook my head, trying to veil my distaste as I settled on a stool nearer to him.

He said, "They all think I'm fucking crazy. This one—" he gestured to Ravyn "—she humors me, but she thinks I'm as fucked in the brain as the rest of them do. She just feels obliged to me."

I glanced at Lightsbane and realized there was some affection between her and the old man. There was no resemblance to be imagined between them; I doubted they were family. But I considered what she had said about the Fall, the battling of Fiends to escape, the long years in the wilds. She would have been a child. She wouldn't have survived without a guardian.

He said, "But I know what I saw. I know what was going on. Or mostly I do. Still haven't figured it all the way out."

He waved his bottle in the direction of the paper-laden table. "But I'll get there. That or die first. Don't really mind which comes first."

I said, "Is this to do with the cult of Aos?"

He shook his head. "No, t'other one."

I said, "Which? I understand that there's a host of little groups worshipping odd deities in the wilds."

Arnie said, "The other big one. The Children. You know the Children?"

I said, "The Children of the Fountain?"

He nodded. "The twisted fuckers. Yeah, those bastards."

I said, "What… what did they have to do with anything? I was told…"

I considered. I wanted to confirm Joel's story, or deny it. He had said that Danefer and he had both been in Cleveland when the Storm struck the city. But I was slow to reveal my interest in such a maddening conspiracy.

He said, "You come here with questions, didn't ya? Well, if anyone has answers to them, then I do. What's your interest in it? Sick curiosity, or you into something culty yourself?"

I said, "I'm doing research with my Chaplain, a priest. We're… writing a history, and he thought there might be good sources here. Sources about what happened during the Storm. He's fascinated by all things of the Griid. He's a little obsessed with the random nature of the storms."

Arnie coughed and spat on the floor. He said, "There's nothing random about some of the storms, boy. Sure as fuck wasn't anything random about that storm."

I waited.

He said, "I was a city watchman in the old city. A senior watchman. I did more than walk the streets and chase pickpockets. I handled cases, investigations. In the last weeks before the storm, we found out that the Children were fucking around in the town, down in the old catacombs. The catacombs of the city were a messy warren of a thing. We wanted to get in there and root the bastards out, but it would be dangerous. And it would be hard to pin all the little freaks down. If we did, we didn't want to just be putting them wise to us being wise of them. So we took our time, we watched them. We gathered our intel, y'see?"

I nodded slowly.

He said, "We picked a couple of them up. Chose our targets, went after the ones that seemed the least devoted, hoping we could get them to talk. And they talked, eventually."

He smiled cruelly, savoring a memory of violence and torture.

He said, "And what they told us made sense. Didn't make sense to the others. They thought they were just talking to crazies. I suppose I did too at the time. But when the Storm came and crushed the city, tore the Tower down… then it made sense to me."

I said, "What made sense?"

He said, "All of it! Their ramblings! The storm!"

I said, "The storm made sense?"

He nodded slowly, enjoying my confusion, savoring his reveal. He said, "Aye, the storm made sense. Because the storm that ripped the city down wasn't an accident. The Children were down under the city with a relic. A powerful old thing that they wanted to use to tear down the Griid. And when the Oracle realized they were close to achieving it, the storm came. Y'see? The storm wasn't random. It was part of a war, between the Children and their cursed god, and the god the rest of the idiots on this earth are worshipping."

"The Oracle destroyed Cleveland on purpose."

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