Back in the library....
He doesn't want it to come to this.
No, that's a lie. He's actually hoping that it will.
He can't strike at them now. Not yet, anyway. There will have to be preparations. And given the way these things tended to go, there would surely be sacrifices required as well.
No matter. He would do whatever was necessary.
The pen in his hand completes the list almost before Wesley realizes he's started to compose it. Not a particularly long list. Quite short, really. But what it lacked in quantity it made up for in purest evil.
The last known leaders of the Circle of the Black Thorn:
Sebassis
Izzerial
Helen Brucker
the Fell Brethren's Potentate
leader of the Sahrvin Clan
And, of course, Vail. It always came back to Cyvus Vail.
Wesley shifts in his chair. He can still feel the sorcerer's blade driving deep into his gut. Stealing away his life, releasing it, spilling it drop-by-drop unto the cold floor of his inner sanctum. Wesley remembers every precious moment.
Vail isn't dead. Wesley's certain of that now. Perhaps the sorcerer was responsible for the messages left for him in the Scrolls of Marius, perhaps it was someone else. But in the end, Wesley knows he'll find Vail had had something to do with it.
And if Vail isn't dead, might the others still be alive as well?
It hardly mattered. Whether they were dead or not, the Senior Partners must already be recruiting. Building a new Circle to rise from the ashes of the old.
So they would be the enemy now. And Vail.
Always, always, Vail.