Appoggee Under Fire
by Jeff

...it was clear that this was a bad situation. I had to get my host out of that fracas. Fortunately the boiler on the car was still burning, I pitched a bit more coke into the fire chamber, and took off. Alas, my escape had not gone unnoted. The fiend Dra'Kazenil saw me leave and had somehow alerted his servant Antoinette, who had nudged her team into the road, trying to force me over the precipice to the left. Instead I threw on some more coke, opened the throttle and headed uphill to the right, barely missing the trees and sliding sideways as the rocky slope gave way. I was quickly past her, but the horses had spooked and overturned her wagon. Antoinette pitched headlong down the ravine, but one of the powder barrels came bouncing down with her, smashing into the front wheels of the Steamer as I came around the switchback. The force of the impact nearly drove me over the side of the road, but once again I was able to turn uphill to avoid the plunge. This time the hill was too steep, and the Steamer smashed its front wheels against a boulder. The shock caused the frame to fall asunder, and I tumbled out onto the road and sat there dazed. Antoinette stood up, an amazing feat given the way the bones splayed through her skin, and drew forth a cruel and wicked looking knife. At that moment, the boiler from the Steamer, indignant at the lack of maintenance in the past 15-some years, the excess of fuel I had added in my haste, and the very recent abuse of being driven into the side of a mountain, chose that moment to spilt open along the seam that pointed at Antoinette. My elation at this apparent act of providence was short-lived, for when she fell, horribly burned by the plume of fierce steam, there was no longer any shield between the boiler and my host. I saw the plume reach out to me, and then remember naught until Abcdefgiel came to me and drew my forces from the blistered and burned body, telling me that he and the Malakite had not only driven Dra'Kazenil from the place, but had destroyed the tome as well. Our best reasoning is that the sorcery from the book that had prevented me from assaulting Dra'Kazenil celestially had also bound me into my host body, this we believe accounting for my being struck senseless and unable to leave after my host had died.

I admit that that explanation in no way explains why after having allowed a host I occupied to die I show no sign of dissonance or discord. I do have a question though, Dominic Sir. Have others been ordered to report to the Seraphim Council for not being dissonant, or am I just special?

[End of report]

... of course the last extant copy of "The Tome of Secrets" wasn't supposed to be destroyed, it was supposed to be recovered and returned to the Vatican's forbidden works section, and of course D'K fled after the Malakite set the rail station on fire, what with all those barrels of powder he freighted in for the mine stored in the back, he wasn't going to waste a vessel on a lost cause ... I wouldn't call it Abcdefgiel's fault, they only told him that "D'K and Antoinette weren't supposed to have that book, get it away from them", Yves didn't explicitly say "and bring it back in one piece".

I think D'K was using the powder to blast an abandoned mine deeper, and then use songs from the tome of secrets to establish a new tether. "A gold mine is just a hole in the ground with a balseraph at the top."