[Garrison of the Fourth Legion, Janissary Amenya]

[Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi]

Janissary Amenya,

This letter is overdue. I pray you forgive the delay, for I write in haste, and am hounded by a singularly persistent Foe.

You have offered to aid me. I shall soon ask your service in a great work that shall be the undoing of this Enemy. Please understand the full measure of the risk: If we are successful, the Thing shall be sealed away for a thousand years or more; but if we fail, then few if any shall return. If you refuse I shall not fault you or think less of you.

Understand that my Foe is a named Djinn of the Fleshwrappers, a foul entity that wreaks perversion upon the bodies of those mortals that It comes to inhabit. It changes them, molds them, and when it wishes makes them wholly unrecognizable. Abominable masses of flesh and teeth; such horrors as these have dogged my steps. My name became known to It through Alfred Delafosse, who has long suffered a peculiar necromantic curse, and in the sands as I thought to defend him from necromancy, the foe turned out to be Djinn.

It has a name to hunt but that is the extent of it. For I have not brooked with it and am thus unmarked. Apothar Azimi can verify this. I shall be the author of my own salvation or my own death ere any mark of any Djinn falls upon me. I have a plan for the former and a sharp knife for the latter. But I am hunted across all the sands by this Thing. It mocks me upon the wind, it howls in rage for the tricks I have played upon it to keep myself alive and free, but my reserves grow less and less with each passing day. I am, in truth, exhausted.

It is for this danger, posed by my presence in the Well, that I have stayed outside it. And I shall stay outside it until the Thing is imprisoned or I am slain.

The Plan is this. First, we shall travel to an island upon the Sea of Pearls where there is a lake of fire, which the Fleshwrappers fear; second, we shall see to the attention of this Fleshwrapper through Alfred's presence and draw it into battle upon the stone; third, we shall place this Thing's viscera into an great crucible prepared by the Alchemist's Guild, and burn away that which we do not seal; fourth we shall place the sealed vessel into this lake of fire, where it shall burn forevermore. It will be imprisoned in a roiling cauldron, stewing for a long age, and shall never again trouble any of our Well.

It is my hope that Alfred shall be saved through this as well. His situation is more dire than my own, incredibly; he is marked by it through some pact made when he was in a state of desperation. This he has said to me in letters. And the Thing has taunted me with it on the wind. For proof, seek him, and investigate his person for any mark. It would fall upon the flesh directly.

I understand in writing to you that duty binds you to relay this to the Janissaries. In truth I hope you shall do so: Sergeant Colmes has my respect as a hound for truth and a good man besides. He should know the full measure of this threat. I do not know what may convince you of the sincerity of my words, but that I am the same woman who was prepared to go alone among her Sisters with you into the bowels of a cavernous hell, that we might make safe our Well.

Leave word upon the grove in the High Road, beneath the tower, past the Granary. I shall find it there. Bellow if you would speak.

Yours,

Amelie

[TheShadow]

[This letter, long in the care of Amenya, is forwarded to the desk of Sergeant Colmes]