It had been over a month since the kidnapping, and Landis still hadn't seen Daz. It was tricky trying to catch her when his owls were answered with unsatisfying reassurances if at all, and when the school schedule and the advent of exams meant the library's hours were extended, his workload overtaxed, so that he could never find the time to slip away. Getting out now was probably highly unprofessional, but he'd gotten Trishna to cover for this early Wednesday afternoon when most students were still in classes and the rush wasn't so bad. All it'd taken was the owing of a favor and suffering through the man's skeptically raised eyebrow. That was all right. A single raised eyebrow was better than he'd have gotten had he tried to ask Juliette, his only other option.

By coming so early, Briggs should still be at work. That thought would have sounded suspicious as hell to any outside observer, and that he was even analyzing his own behavior for suspicious conduct was a testament to the sticking power of Juliette's paranoia. How frustrating. How tiring. How completely ridiculous. Landis rapped on Dazmond's door a little sharper than intended, then caught himself and smoothed the frown off his face.

It wouldn't be the easiest meeting anyways. How could it be? Their mutual kidnapping was the big breathy dragon in the room, and for all that he was anxious to see her again Landis was more anxious for the answers she could provide. He loved Dazmond dearly, but this sort of close-mouthed keeping of the facts was just maddening when coming from his best and oldest mate.

When she opened the door he took a moment to be glad he'd sent an owl, else she might not even be home.

"Daz," he greeted, his demeanor warm as he stooped to kiss her on the cheek. But when he continued, "I'd almost forgotten what you looked like," it did not sound quite as teasing as it might have been.

Dazmond had been keeping busy though not often leaving the comfort of her and Nate's flat.  She'd even procured packaging material and had been sending many of her orders by mail.  Six cauldrons were set up and brewing in the small space of the living room, if you could call it that, at any given time, and as soon as one was done she would bottle, clean, begin again.  She had very little patience for the letters from Landis and had done her best to send him reassuring words.  Some of his missives were a bit overbearing and she may have neglected to respond to them all, operating under the assumption that exam season would keep him preoccupied at Hogwarts and they wouldn't have to have any uncomfortable and unnecessary conversations about last month's incident. 

She'd be lying if she said she was not surprised that he took time away from school to finally meet with her.  It hadn't been phrased in a way that was entirely easy to argue with, but she'd sent him a response with a go-ahead nonetheless. 

The day of she couldn't help but feel restless.  Nate had left and she'd spent as much time pacing and rearranging the mantel as she had brewing potions.  It didn't help her morale that three of the six cauldrons were orders for Kronos.  She was having an interesting time filling her usual orders on top of all of his demands and curiosities.

She heard the sharp rap at the door and seamlessly went toward it, taking a breath before clearing the locks and holding it open for him as it creaked on its worn and damaged hinges.  Her eyes went full to his face and he bent slightly to kiss her cheek.  She held his arm as he did so and returned the motion before he straightened, smiling with a tad of irony as his joke registered as a reprimand.

"Don't be terse," she said with a coy smile, "Come on inside."  She took her time shutting the door behind him, not forgetting to redo all seven of the locks.  She turned around finally to look at him and couldn't help but cross her arms over her chest defensively.  She was just as ready to deny that anything bad had happened as he was ready to discuss it all in earnest, she supposed.  But if she was honest with herself she knew there was no reason in putting him off further.  If he was so determined as to meet with her now, then there'd be no reason to avoid the confrontation now that he was here in her living room.

"Should we sit down," she offered, nodding her head toward the wide window sills that were lined with thin cushions. 

She fiddled with her locks - all seven, a lucky number, a powerful and purposeful number - and it stank of paranoia more typical to him than to her. Landis took the opportunity to scan the room as she busied herself, as if in looking he'd see something revealed. But he was in no position to know she'd not left her house in a goodly while; Daz's cozy little Knockturn abode looked exactly as it always had.

When he paid mind to her again she had her arms crossed and a look in her eyes that was half-wariness, half-warning. Landis' own eyes narrowed at the defensive stance. No pretending, then, no putting things off. They'd have this out now. Good. Landis had such an awful lot to say, and one falsely innocent word might've put his simmering anger over the edge.

It was unusual for him to feel this way towards Dazmond. Well, no, to be more truthful it was rare for him to act on it. Disagreements had always been settled quickly in the past when they weren't too serious; on the occasion that they were, Landis was more likely to bite his tongue and excise the bitterness than speak and provoke ill feeling. He hadn't many friends, so he forgave the ones he had a great, great deal. And it was so easy to get along with Dazmond when the going was good; it was so easy to take pleasure in her company and her warm, wicked self when he only got to see her every once and a while. They'd been thick as thieves in school and he still trusted her now, or he had until he'd been sustained this long on weak excuses and a tricksy, transparent tendency to give him the slip.

It was a poor way to repay years and years of friendship. In Malvivicus' castle he had been afraid for her, concerned, and furious. He had felt helpless, an emotion so unfamiliar to him as to cause its own kind of pain. A month and a week later, she'd let Dolly come see her but hesitated on him? Something dark and seething within him rose like bile at the thought. It felt almost like betrayal.

If that wasn't enough, he still had her actions before the kidnapping to question, too. Only he and Dolly had spoken of it, but no one in that room could have been stupid enough to miss the calculation she'd employed. She hadn't needed to do it; they'd all been hers for the asking. But she hadn't asked, she'd forced their hand. Landis' hand - Juliette's. Dazmond had been... selfish.

"Should we sit down,"

"Yes." But Landis cast one long glance towards the six bubbling cauldrons before he went to claim a window sill. It wasn't unusual for Daz to be brewing, and the poor cauldrons certainly didn't deserve the look he gave them. But now, for all he knew, each one of those potions might not be brewed by choice but for her new employer.

He settled himself slowly, fastidiously, not out of a desire to draw things out but searching for the right words to begin. Ah, well. Simplicity was key. He could pin her down on specifics as they went along.

"Dazmond," he said patiently. "What the hell's going on?"

Dazmond watched him and his reactions closely before moving to join him by the large windows.  Arms still tucked tightly cross her chest, she lowered herself rather close to him on the wide window sill, her stance a strange cross between forgivingly warm and markedly guarded.  She sat with her legs crossed, her posture straight and her body along with her gaze turned fully towards him in curious earnest.  She did know what this was about; he was not happy with her.  It must have been a blend of worry and some markedly absurd rage - she did not want to answer to anything, but she certainly wouldn't be rude to Landis.

She pointedly waited and let him have the first word and, when it came, it was not surprisingly succinct and pointed in its purpose.  Her lips pursed momentarily.  She didn't exactly know why he was being so difficult.  What was there to say about any of this?  He had been there, hadn't he?  He knew exactly what was going on, and so what was the matter with it.  She had a new client!  She was filling orders.  Why drudge up trouble where there was none?  They had worked out their deal.

"What is so different from what has always been going on," she asked calmly, uncrossing her arms and placing her hands at her knees.  Looking down at them she added, "I've a new client, haven't I?  I don't see what the problem is now that it's been sorted out.  Landis, everything is fine."  She turned her gaze towards his face with a nearly pleading expression.  Why did he feel that everything was not fine, that something dire was happening?  That had been done with, it was in the past, wasn't it.  There was no point in dwelling on what had happened when there was so much to be done now, aiming towards the future.  Dazmond felt that everything had worked itself out in some way, and she just wanted to be done with it all.  She had their orders to fill, but that was hardly consequential in comparison to what previous months were like. 

She was lucky to be alive, and so she didn't much care about the details.  Dazmond thought that Landis shouldn't either.  But she didn't know how to explain that to him. 

Looking at him, having him there, she wanted to simply bask in his presence.  It was not so often that she got to see him anymore, and usually when she had the chance to it was always under the most pleasant circumstances.  It felt extraordinarily weird that he was in a sense coming to reprimand her.  Hands folded in her lap she took a stance that could only be described as wary curiosity.  What was the matter?  Nothing was the matter.  He was, quite simply, over-reacting.  She waited just as patiently as him, denying that anything was wrong with this picture, and hoping that he'd waver under the consideration that she was, after all, all right.

She sat close, facing him, her expression only slightly puckered at his troubling attack. She looked open, and earnest, and willing to negotiate as long as he stuck only to questions that she wanted to answer. The look of troubled incomprehension that flitted across her face after he'd voiced his demand only annoyed him more.

"Don't be deliberately dense," he said sharply, before the pleading note in her voice hit him and he regretted his harshness. She obviously didn't want to talk about this. She seemed bewildered by his insistence to discuss it at all. Poor Dazmond, then, because all the begging in the world wouldn't make him drop this. That look certainly wasn't going to do it. He had the absurd thought that she might feel as betrayed by his persistence to stir up unsettling thoughts as he felt by her inability to recognize that anything unsettling had happened at all.

He'd have done something similar in her situation, but with other people. Not with her. And he could even readily admit that Dazmond had not just himself to talk to but Dolly, and Briggs, and Dominik, and  Cináed. Surely there was one of them she'd trust.

Although admittedly, he would have liked that one to be him.

"Everything's not fine," he said, his own body language shifting to mirror hers. His hands smoothed with too-deliberate care over the fabric of his trousers and then folded together in his lap. Head bent towards her, body angled, he was open and attentive and... frustrated. "Despite what the criminal world may have taught you to expect, kidnapping is a highly unusual way of obtaining new employees. I don't want your empty reassurances that nothing happened while we were there. Do you want me to lay out the reasons, my suspicions, the signs? Tell me the deal he struck with you, what he did to earn your fear and your obedience. Don't make me scry it from your tone and the shape of what you're avoiding saying. I don't want to have to guess by the contents of your cauldrons where you were while in the castle and what threat he has on you. Just tell me, Dazmond, please."

You owe me. He didn't say it. Her recognition of that was not what he wanted, it was not important, it was possibly not true. There was something else he was looking for in her face and her manner, any throwaway scrap in her response that he could hear and be assured. It was selfish of him, to expect a slip that'd reveal perhaps she'd been worried about him too. He'd spent his captivity desperately furious about that which he couldn't know or change; he wanted to know they'd been in it together, that he was not raging against some thoughtless inevitability. Her denial belittled everything.

The initial harsh attack of Landis's words were felt in Dazmond, but she didn't really register them.  She knew that they were products of an emotional sort and so she felt them but didn't react.  She was used to Landis and his ways; she didn't feel his brashness should gestate concern in her own being from such an immediate response.  She merely looked at him and watched the feelings change.  He did move immediately to correct the harsh beginnings of his speech.  That wasn't to say that he was being easy - he seemed deliberately hostile in making this harder than it should have really been, in her eyes.

It wasn't even that she hoped to put one over on him.  Dazmond simply didn't want to make a deal of it at all, with anyone.  Surely the most important people should be the ones to look it over and to allow her some free way.  Dolly had even visited her several times without so much as asking, even if she had been having fervent conversations about it behind Dazmond's back - least of all calling her names, which Dazmond had no way of knowing.  Dominik, too, had not asked her anything about the kidnapping, but rather took her home on the weekends and made sure that was getting by on her own.  Nate had accepted where she was as he had always done, and their life together continued without a hiccup.

And yet Landis was, for perhaps the first time in years, really genuinely on her case.  Watching him as he commented further with an alarming ferocity, Dazmond's eyes slightly widened and noticeably dampened with the starting of tears.  She was quite shocked and taken aback by his nerve.  She could not detect what he really meant to say in that moment because it was too washed over with emotion on her own part.  She didn't even know the last time that she had cried in front of him, but there was no masking the unwanted wetness of her eyes as she thought to comment on his demands.

"What is there to even say to you about it," she stated with some exasperation.  Her folded hands on her lap lost their composure and merely sunk there without formation.  "Salazar, Landis, you were there.  How's one to argue with such a man?  What other threat than life is there to be taken?  I'd spent a year trying to figure it all out and now I have.  Now I know what he is and what it was, and now I have a bloody new client.  What else is there to worry about?"  She looked at him, her own eyes drilling into his, simultaneously daring him to make a deal of it and wondering what his deal with it was. 

Dazmond was in no place to know that what he wanted, at least in part, was to know that she had cared for him as he had cared for her.  If she had, perhaps it would have been simpler.  Dazmond actually cared quite a deal for Landis, quite a deal more than hardly anyone she had ever known in her life.  And while they were there, she had thought about him quite a deal.  Quite a large deal, she had. 

But it was much too early in this little chat of theirs for her to be losing her composure.  She thought that she had protected herself against such a possibility.  Nevertheless she felt what she felt.  She didn't dare look away from him, which certainly made it worse.  He was the one who had been there with her, who had rid the last waves of her year of horror by her side.  And still he didn't know.  But why should he or anyone else know how it had ended?  It didn't matter how much she loved Landis.  She didn't want to talk about it, to acknowledge that it had any power of its own.  And so as she looked at him, she offered him in her eye a warning stance.  He didn't want to go there.  He didn't want to hurt her in that way. 

"Let off it, Landis, please," she said.  "What are we doing like this?  Just let off it."

"What is there to even say to you about it."

Landis felt a quick little pain, the sharp arrow-shot of epiphany, and thought, aha. Now he knew her angle. She wanted him to understand wordlessly, or not at all, and it did not seem to matter which. From the exasperation in her voice, he had already worn out his welcome. 

"Let off it, Landis, please. What are we doing like this?  Just let off it."

For one mad instant, Landis considered saying it. "No." He wanted to know, he needed to know, and she would tell him if he just kept at it. Already there were tears in her eyes as she refused; in a bit she would be shaking, in a bit less those tears would really flow. She wasn't used to such pressure from him. But she would buckle if he continued - how could she defend herself from one who knew her as he did? - so eventually, she would. He felt so predatory, and it shamed him, and shame made him callous and more wont to be cruel.

Tough love, one might say. In this case. He could spend all the time in the world building her up again if he could just break her down first. He'd lay her head against his chest and soothe her so beautifully if her tears meant he'd get an answer.

But that was a terrible way to think. It was intolerable. This was Dazmond, and he couldn't - he shouldn't - Landis oughtn't be cruel to her. He felt dangerous now and half-mad with frustration, ruthless in his methodical urge to unravel his ignorence. There was something desperate in this return to what he knew best - scenting out weakness like blood in the water - like once she told him he'd know how to fix things, but until then he was directionless and blind. Helpless again, in an entirely different setting, but still unable to reach her.

He was misguided, mistaken, and clumsy. He was foolish beyond belief. This would help nothing; it would only be too easy to damage their friendship beyond repair if he didn't rein himself in. While he found it hard to care in that brief, screaming moment between thinking that "no" and almost voicing it, he'd regret it very dearly later. He regretted thinking it very dearly even now. 

Poor Dazmond. How confusing this must be for her, how futile, and how bizarre. He so rarely pressed. And just because he didn't want to have to guess from her face and her tone what had happened didn't mean he wasn't capable; quietly he examined her adamant refusals, tenderly he drew out the truth from what she wasn't saying. Did it really matter if she told him how Malvivicus had hurt her? If she confirmed his worst suspicions? It did, it did - but he could figure it out on his own.

Despite his earlier conviction, Landis gave up.

"Fine," he said, with a gentleness born of resignation. "All right. I'll let off it."

Landis rose from the window seat with a slight jerkiness of motion, stepping over a fallen cushion to get away. He couldn't stand to be near Dazmond at that moment, not when he was mentally putting things together and she of all things still had tears in her eyes. He was feeling the most curious sense of anticlimaticism when what he'd wanted was denouement. It was an unsettling sort of bleakness, but bleak was better than ashamed. Both were better than self-directed scorn.

If she didn't want to place her trust in him, that was... fine. As long as she had others. She probably wouldn't confess to anyone though, she would doubtless keep this locked inside until it ceased to sting. Forgotten was not the same as fixed. He worried for her, and then a moment later remembered he still had her manipulations to bear in mind, the way she'd taken advantage of their trust. He was supposed to be angry, but no use asking her about it now. Maybe this was another thing to keep to himself.

He would have liked to leave, to have had some time to think on this by himself, but he ought first to reassure Dazmond that things were as they'd always been. That they were fine, that he wouldn't press again. A moment of madness, now passed, in daring to pry. Even if he went back now, duty informed him to relieve Trishna immediately. He wouldn't have time to himself until the library closed tonight anyways.

He turned towards her again once he was away from that little stage of windows and pillows and seat, standing in the middle of her living room like he'd forgotten halfway there why he wanted to go. His face was very calm and his shoulders very straight.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You're right. It wasn't my place to press."

She almost hadn't expected it to happen, but he withdrew his demands and rose up and walked away from her.  Feeling very vulnerable and strangely shaken, Dazmond drew her legs up and quickly crossed them beneath her.  She was suddenly very torn between wanting to take it back and wanting to keep the silence.  Eyes wet and alert, she sat very straight and still, watching Landis.  And he turned, and he said what he said, and Dazmond felt a sinking sensation slip through her, the weight of it devastating.  It was that he'd said it wasn't his place that really did it to her.  There was something beneath it that alerted her to his sense of dejection - that he hadn't a stake in her heart.  It was untrue.

"No, it is," she said, a hint of urgency beyond the words.  She didn't want to shut him out.  What she had hoped was that he would already understand, that he would have shared in the feeling merely by the fact of his proximity - but his mood was pleading and it was the demand that had her stop short and resist.  How was she supposed to put words to what had happened, to where she rested?  The actual events of the kidnapping as they had transpired were not something that Dazmond wanted to discuss or to really think about at all, more than she could help, at least.  But there was some other thing there - an ocean of affect that had settled into her being, a transformation of her soul that had left her a different Witch than she'd been when she'd started off on this long, involuntary adventure. 

"Help me to talk about it," said Dazmond, her voice fragile with her relenting reserve.  She had never been out with her emotions when they were overbearing; as much as she could, she had always kept them deep inside and guarded like an impenetrable diamond.  This, though, was harder to contain and especially from Landis, who was now such a part of it and demanding to know.  She knew that Landis needed her to share it with him, and how important it really was now for their friendship and its strength.  He wanted to know about the threat, but it was something even greater that overwhelmed her.  It was not what had physically happened to her that she wanted to discuss - it was what had happened to her on a cosmic level.  She was not a poet - she didn't know how to go about trying to explain it.  But she felt deeply that she owed him something, she could tell it was implied by both his heat and his sudden pulling together as he cooled. 

What threat did the man have over her?  He had shown through the most demonstrable way that he could take her life away from her, he had possibly even taken something out of her spirit, and she was good-as-well branded for blind devotion to his service.  All he wanted was her business and she wasn't to be confined.  She relented and it was done, there hadn't been another choice.  There was no going back and there was no purpose in fighting it.  He had broken her will to fight against him and this, in large part, drove her desire to leave it alone and try to move forward under her new arrangement.  With her new life.

"I didn't strike a deal," she said.  "I just learned that it isn't something that can be fought."

"No, it is."

Landis only watched her and waited, patient as a priest. The calm that had settled over him was wonderfully fatalistic, and now he knew what he would do. Comfort her, leave. Like that. It was a simple two-step process that did not involve his being away from his librarian post for much longer, and it honestly did not involve much in the way of emotion. So it was to his own surprise as well that her next words had him instantly back at her side again, easing onto the window seat and slipping a hand under one of her own.

"Of course," he said, and inwardly cursed himself for a fool.

"I didn't strike a deal. I just learned that it isn't something that can be fought."

It was a terrible thing to hear coming from Dazmond, knowing how she valued her freedom, her independence, her... life. For him his new employment had merely been a nuisance. For her, this was an end. Landis' desire to lay a trap and eventually murder Kronos had not needed her to fan its flame, but still it rose now until it nearly choked him. Hatred stirred in his bones, bitterness coated his tongue. Malvivicus was such a bastard.

He didn't know how to tell her, I'll kill him. Put so bluntly it lacked elegance and wit, it was cliche and meaningless. It would be impossible for her to believe him when Kronos was so untouchable, so guarded and so seemingly high above both their heads. He found himself at a loss for words when all he could think of was vengeance - like a broken record, bleating promises of protection insubstantial in this storm. His fingers tightened briefly around her own, and when he lowered his eyes it was only to shield the quick snap and dart of him trying to figure a way out. There was always a way.

He told her anyway, because he couldn't think of anything better.

"Things won't be like this long. I've a mind to see him dead." And if that sounded like so much schoolboy bravado, he added with the sly flick of his gaze. "Cináed will help."

Though she didn't doubt that he would, Dazmond was warmed substantially by the way in which Landis rushed to her side; she was flooded by feelings, as well, acutely aware as she was of the balancing act between tender care and emotional guarding that had characterized their relationship in recent times.  He was there for the moment when she would open up, after all this time a source as solid as stone for support and the deepest sense of friendship.  She loved him dearly.

Dazmond let her eyes downward, moving over Landis and sometimes drawing up to catch his gaze.  She was calmer now and her hand not limp, but actively twining with his fingers.  It settled her somewhat, and she was comfortable with the silence though not fond of his conclusion.  She felt a sudden terror overwhelm her breast at the notion.  It was wrong of him to think that he or Cinaed could stop Kronos - it was bigger than their back-alley revolution and they would not only die but be defeated in spirit if they tried.  Her feelings on the matter were complicated at best, but the underlying sensation was that fighting back would end in the worst sort of massacre possible.  She looked at him and hesitated, feeling his eagerness to set things right, to protect her.  How could she tell him it was futile, that she thought he'd die trying to save her from something she couldn't be saved from?

Dazmond didn't actually feel that she needed saving, that anything more would come of it if she merely did what was asked of her.  She had seen the worst of it already - it simply couldn't escalate beyond what it already was unless she or anyone else went about asking for trouble.  The thought of them stirring it up terrified her.  She'd seen what the punishment was for going against the man - she'd felt the dark shadows of death curling round her and knew that her life was no longer timeless.  She'd always lived as though she was invincible - now she felt lucky to be alive one moment to the next.  He could slip in and end it, or he could drive her to the brink of insanity and this time not stop.  It was too much to go asking for.  Her experience had not even been delivered by his hands, his magic.  He had powerful and twisted allies with a passion for punishment.

"Landis...," started Dazmond lightly.  She knew deeply how delicate this was, but it couldn't be let alone.  She had to dissuade him from taking action. 

"It's suicide," she said.  "It isn't one Wizard with a big house we're dealing with - it's a vast network of wands waiting to end any threat to surface.  I think you're brilliant and I'd trust you with my life, but there isn't a Wizard or force in the world today that can fight against this.  Please believe me, if you act on this we'll all be dead tomorrow after being driven mad.  The worst is over - we need to leave that in the past."

Oops. He'd misjudged. He so often did, when it came to comfort. All he wanted was Malvivicus' head on a plate, but it seemed that promise only panicked his friend.

But it didn't matter what Dazmond thought or said. If this experience hadn't already taught him to distrust her conclusions, his own nature would have him dismiss it. Malvivicus controlled her through fear now, and she couldn't - wouldn't? - fight back. But he couldn't help but do so. For a man who lived with near-constant paranoia this had not been a wake-up call,  only a confirmation of all his cynical beliefs. As easy as it would be to continue under these new parameters, stewing in the bitter satisfaction of one who's been proved right, that would be pathetic. He wouldn't live like that, and he wouldn't allow Kronos to treat him so. Landis had pride to rival Lucifer's, and no intention to fall.

He was not like Dazmond; he hadn't been punished as she'd been. He'd never met Kronos before this, but the man's assumption that he'd been too weak to fight back had rankled. He would fight back, but he'd do it on his own terms. Giving in was not in his nature; biding his time was.

"That's exactly why this needs to be put into motion. If you don't want me to do this for you, I've got plenty of other reasons. One man can't have this much power. It's bad enough dodging the Ministry without having to guess who's whispering in his ear."

Malvivicus wasn't invincible, despite whatever he'd convinced Dazmond. So he had a fortune to throw around - that meant his network's loyalty was negotiable. So he used fear for control, employed it like blinders - that was all right. Landis could be pretty frightening himself. Malvivicus had men who liked causing pain, but Landis was practiced, eager, and ruthless. He was not blind to Kronos' weaknesses, and he would enjoy exploiting them.

Landis had felt directionless lately, restless, reckless, lacking in control. He'd thought he was a patient man but after months at school he was itching for something to devote himself to. Perhaps this could be his purpose. For a while.

"Taking down a criminal network...." he mused aloud, a nasty glint in his eye the only sign that he knew this wasn't what she wanted to hear. "Hm, could be fun." He smiled gently, coaxingly, as if to say, Come on Daz, we've all got to have our hobbies.

Dazmond sharpened her focus on Landis, quite still in her demeanour with a poised sense of vigilance.  She was, however opposed to the idea of that battle, appealed by Landis's way of answering with clarity as glass-like as the face of an intriguing, dark crystal; there were layers to what he said and to how he laid out his words, and they rang with the temptations of a more wild being.  There could hardly be any doubt that Dazmond would normally respond to such an inclination with total confidence in their success; it would have easily roused her inner riotous side under less dire of circumstances.  But now she felt a lower thunder, a duller light, remembering over the course of his words her devotion to a developing ideology.  Why not fight for total independence - even all-out like Cinaed?  She was in deeper now than ever, and so was Nathan.  It did feel that every day she was inching further and further away from the world of the lawful citizen, if she had ever belonged to that world in the first place.  Whatever this new world was, though, it was getting harder and harder to tell.

But to connect that idea with the other, the idea of going against Kronos, of trying to undermine him... it didn't feel obvious to Dazmond.  The Wizards of the Blood Alliance were mostly, as far as she knew, part of a nebulous band of outlaws with an anarchistic attitude and a stake in personal freedom, Witches and Wizards both, Halfblood or Pure, all together superior to non-magical folk and ready to have their world the way they wanted it - free from the threat of intervention and the cold towers of Azkaban.  She could not see a conflict of interest between the two, the Alliance and the Goliath Kronos.  Other than the more obvious fact that personal freedom and Kronos didn't necessarily go hand in hand.  She was hot-headed enough to believe that they could take down the Ministry of Magic perhaps, a vast and well-greased cauldron, some day - so why not this old bloke with fine suits and gaudy pendants as well?  His tone had asked all this, and as the thoughts occurred to Dazmond she greeted the notion of targeting Malvivicus with a mix of curiosity and the heebee-jeebees.  There was a power in numbers and she had to admit that the WBA had proven itself to be impressively low-key, so much so that she wasn't even sure of everything that they had accomplished or everything that they had planned.   

Still, as morbidly fun as it almost sounded, Dazmond could see no reason to tease fate in such a way.  By merit of the impression he had made, Kronos seemed like the kind of man you accepted as a mandatory asset in your life rather than as an enemy.  She was fairly sure that the Ministry was at least a common enemy of theirs, and as a business woman she could not help but notice how useful he and his connections might actually be in that regard.  And it was increasingly tempting to think in such a manner with all of the pressures of recent months - the Runespoor business wrapping its fingers through her business like an omen as eerie as a dark mark in the sky.  The look she offered Landis was enough to show all of her ambivalence and indecision about the issue.   

"I wouldn't tell me that much more about it," she said lightly.  "I think it's best if he doesn't know that you aim to be devious."  Dazmond looked down and grew substantially calmer, reminded of the fact that Landis was always subtle in his tactics at least.  He wasn't letting off that easily but he wouldn't be diving in blindly, either.  Dazmond eased off of the issue, knowing in part that it wouldn't be useful to argue with him now.  "I wouldn't put the possibility of being slipped Veritaserum out of my mind," she continued with a side-long glance.  She neglected to mention just then her familiarity with Kronos Malvivicus's hobby of reading minds.  She was not exactly keen on going into the details of her distant memory if he wasn't commanding her to at the moment.  There were more important things for the two of them to think about than the days past.

"It almost seems like we would be better off directing our energies towards the WBA," said Dazmond.  "We need to figure out where we stand and what sort of thing we can be creating.  Everything's really been changing... we clearly can't expect that the Ministry is going to protect us."  She was not blind to the irony in her statement and it carried on her voice with a slight bitter-sweetness.  "I want to try to organize something," she affirmed, looking over at him.  "Don't you think we'd be better off building our network before trying to take down an empire?  What about everything outside of this that was everything before?"