“Do ye yield?”

“No! I believe in a way into it; no place can be sealed hermetically. No, I shouldn’t have spent nine years drinking flagons of rye. My wit is damaged, my chainmail encrusted with puke and blood. Today doesn’t matter. Or tomorrow! It may take weeks or years, but we can’t yield. It may seem odd: the silence, the purity, the emptiness, the abacus, my severed finger… But what’s imprisoned within that lithic puzzle of walls doesn’t belong to them. We’ll get in; these iron doors are going to slide.”

“Who?”

“You can do nothing against The Reges.”