Back Room of the South Main Garage, 28 March 2009, Around Midnight...

With a troubled expression creasing his brow, Korshan sits in one of the creaky wooden chairs around his room's only table. Leaning forward to place his elbows on against the edge, he rubs roughly calloused fingers along the edge of his jawline and wonders exactly what happened this evening. The odd collection of events play over in his mind...meeting Rael and Sue in the Fruited Plain...being invited along on a late evening picnic...ending up in the woods alone with an amazingly beautiful woman...having the world suddenly pulled out from under him...finding that the little ones had run in terror...seeing the way Sue reacted to the unseen threat...fleeing the darkened woods with her...ending up here in his room...and finding that the woman he called Dark Eyes to be not only beautiful, but understanding, compassionate and wonderful in her way.

Needless to say, he was more than a little stunned. More than that, he was a bit worried about his Gremlins...the Little Ones never stayed away this long...not even when he was terribly angry with them. That alone bothered him more than he would have cared to say. Reaching over to the mahogany leather backpack that sits on the chair beside him, he loosens the clasp and draws out the sheathed obsidian dagger he keeps there. Placing it carefully upon the table before him, he thinks back to the tense moment when he considered drawing it out in plain sight of the woman at his side who drew her own blade in some instinctual reaction. "What of the Winds was that thing anyhow...?" The deeply voiced question reverberates off of the cinderblock walls, an echo of the empty lack of an answer returning to his ears and leaving him no less disturbed.

Pulling the gleaming black chipped blade away from the leather that keeps its razor sharp edges from shredding to ribbons anything it might touch, he turns the blade over and over within the strong grip of his hand. The light of the bare bulbs overhead glints in the semicircular ridges that were hammered in as his Grandfather gave the blade its arrowhead shape and casts small shadows in the depressions of the mark at its center known to him as The Claw of Sarrath. This was likely to be the most powerful weapon he would ever hold in his hand, yet he wonders if it would have been enough if things had gone differently in the woods. His mind wanders over the things his Father said to him when he returned home to ask for this Dagger that his Grandfather had left him to carry through his travels and troubles. "So it has come that you have seen some of the things in this world that you thought were just tales meant to frighten little boys, have you?" His Father's amused tone had not set well with him. "I would tell you that there are more frightening and powerful creatures out there you have not even heard the names of. Some of them good, some very bad and all of them dangerous. But why do I tell you this, my son Korshan...you would not be here now if you did not feel that this was so." He held the bare blade of ebon stone before him, pointing it at his son as if to make clear the warning he breathed. "None of them are to be trifled with foolishly if you wish to give this to your son some day. Remember that..."

Korshan sighed heavily and slid the blade easily into the leather sheath, leaving it where it lay for the moment. "I remember your words, Father, of the Shimulo which I had seen, of the Spirits which I had felt and of the Lupines from which this Dagger comes...that is why I know it can never be enough." The depth of his voice seemed hollow to him somehow, as though into its depths fell his strength. Wandering further into the past, the images of that odd group he was a part of during his sister Aliya's rescue come more into focus. All around him were those who bore weapons of all types and special clothing that protected them. The glint of dark metal catches in the corner of his mind's eye, the gun held by the alabaster pale hands of one who would put herself in the way of harm for another...Kim's hands. He imagines for a moment what he might have been able to do if he'd had a gun of his own that night.

Nearly to the point of decision, he is pulled away from the intensity of thoughts that draw him further on by the feel of a very familiar presence...the little ones were returning! Closing his eyes, he reaches out to hear them, to see them and the numbing tingle of the Glamour washes through his senses to find...utterly terrified silence. His eyes fly open in an instant. Before him on the table, a throng of deathly pale and shivering Gremlins stare at him wide eyed, an empty and uncomprehendable shock registering on their little faces. They give the sheathed blade a wide birth as they slowly approach their Big Gypsy. Cupping his hands together, he lowers them to the tabletop and watches quietly as they climb into them. In the silence, as the little ones take comfort from his immense and grounding presence, the Gypsy finds his answer...to combine all that his Father and his People have taught him with the knowledge he has gained along his winding way and the examples of the protectors he has come to know...