[ LOCATION ] — THE GREAT SEA OF KARUUN / FORBIDDEN WORLD / 4TH OCTANT [ CHARACTERS ] — HARMON (HUMAN) / MERRICK (HUMAN) [ STATUS ] — POWER STRUGGLE ———————————————————— Every intelligence service ever built eventually turns its cleverness inward. The enemy is one thing. The rival at the next desk is quite another, and by far the more dangerous. ———————————————————— Which is why Ambassador Merrick, one of Vidya’s finest and most careful men, placed a bet he told almost no one about. He wagered the heretics were on their way to wake Omnith. And he sent a single operative to be sure. ———————————————————— Harmon. Ever the good soldier. She did not ask why a mission this large was being run this quietly. She already knew. ———————————————————— If Merrick was right, it would not be the heretics who paid for it. It would be his superiors — the ones who had watched a forbidden world for an age, and seen nothing. A hunch, quietly proven, is the sharpest knife an ambassador owns. ——...