\section{The Night the Circle Broke.}

Aristotle sat by the fire, with Frederika, looking like a harmless
teenage girl. It made him feel ill the way she would toast
marshmallows on a stick, in the fire and then swallow them. Ill,
because he would either forget what she was and then suddenly remember
when he looked in her eyes, or ill because he would remember, and the
notion of someone that powerful eating beside him would make the fear
he had first felt, return.

Seeming to sense his discomfort, she put the stick to one side and
looked at him with a serious expression. With a voice full of concern,
she spoke, her quiet words visible in the cold night air. "If your
Childer, Becket, still worries you, maybe I could meet him. Talk to
him. Explain what I have seen and what I know."

"I thank you for the offer, my Lord. Alas, speaking to Becket achieves
nothing. He is sure to rationalise the argument is some way. Anyway, I
am not sure that he could be convinced that you do not have some
reason for misleading us all." 

Aristotle, stopped, suddenly afraid he had said something wrong. One
does not poke a tiger when you share it's cage, an old friend had once
told him. He waited, afraid.

The girl next to him sighed, the vapor of her breath exploding from
her mouth like smoke from a fire. She lowered her head and looked into
the fire.

"Aristotle, you disappoint me. You think I have some Evil purpose
behind inviting you here. Your fear I will gobble you up like the
Iron Hag herself? Everything about me puts you on edge."

"I am afraid that is the way I am. Years of such behaviour are hard to
break." He watch, fascinated, as she shifted into her normal shape,
that of a beautiful woman. No matter what form she wore, her brilliant
green eyes always shone with a power that he found unnerving.

"It saddens me that you too are a victim of the Jyhad, my friend.
It seems to distrub you when I appear young. Is this better?"

Friend? Aristotle's mind raced. "Um, yes, thank you." She lent close
to him, extending her hand out to his shoulder.

"I shall let you in on the secret. The secret of the Jyhad, Aristotle.
That secret is Trust."

"You will never trust me, because of my power, because of my age,
because of what I know. You fear me, and quite rightly. But because of
that and the legends you have studied, you and I can never be close.
We are forever kept apart. You can never trust me. You will always
doubt me. You, my friend, are lost to me."

"The Elders who work against us all have won. They need not fight us,
for we can never unite. They have won the first battle before we even
start. They have divided us."

Aristotle looked into her face, and saw concern in her features,
intermixed with a shadow of lonelyness. He saw her reaching out to
him.

Aristotle's cheeks burned with flame, as he felt that age old part of
himself interupt, and warn him, she must be trying to get something,
have some reason for wanting his trust.

He broke her gaze and looked down at his feet. Knowing that what she
said was true and that he could never make the leap, into the open,
into the light. He would always fear. 

When he looked up, there was a look of understanding on her face.
"I know, you can not bring yourself to trust. Trust is a valuable
thing and you are here to witness just how valuable. Those who come
towards us now were once my closest friends. We shall see if trust can
be regained after it has been broken."

Out of the trees stepped Ingrid and Knight.

Ingrid came over and stood over Aristotle. There was nothing overt
about it, but it was a threat. "What's he doing here? I thought we
were going to talk things through?"

"We are. He is here to learn a lesson, tonight, not to write anything.
Everything here is between us."

"Easier to keep the secret when noone else knows", Knight interupted.

"I wish it. I allow you to run the city and you to play with your
Sabbat friends. Entertain my whims. Tell him of that night, and how
you came to be there, around that fire."

Ingrid snorted, maybe an attempt to laugh. She knelt down by
Aristotle's ear. "I'm sure I don't need to threaten you, scribe. I am
sure you can work out what not to write."

Then she stood up and walked around to the other side of the fire,
tossing on a huge bundle of kindling. The fire roared to life and
Aristotle shifted nervously on the tree trunk he sat on, noting that
the other three didn't seem to notice at all.

They all sat down, leaning closer to the fire than Aristotle dared
sit. They excahanged glanced.

"It's just like old times, isn't it?", Ingrid put forward. But noone
looked convinced.







"Ok. I'll start. I joined because I had been fighting the Elders for
years anyway. The idea of organising it seemed exciting. I came to see
what could be done about really smashing those bastards from their
towers."

"Well, when I joined, it was little more than a rabble of childred,
annoyed at their elders for having more toys and pushing them round.
Oh, sure their were people committed to the idea, but it really just
seemed like a short lived thing."

"Anyway, I had traveled this far, I wanted to make sure, so I stayed
and helped for a bit. After a while the children left and the core
were left, the ones who really believed. It wa.."

"This is the Sabbat, isn't it?" Aristotle interupted.

Ingrid turned and looked at him with a stare of contempt. "Do you want
me to spell that for you?"

"Anyway, as I was saying, those core believers believed in freedom and
individuality. All the the things that my people had before those
Christians came and crushed it all. Not that I really cared about the
philosophy behind it all, at that stage, I just wanted to spill blood.
Whatever the reason, I started to feel at home again."

"The Sabbat needed some big sucesses and quickly, so they started to
form packs of older members, to organise and train the younger ones in
attacking Camarilla strong holds. I ended up in one, with Julian.
Of course Julian was just a child himself then. Smart, but young.
After a few missions, he was a True Sabbat and rather than leave, he
became a useful addition to the Elders in our pack."

"The Elders in our pack were Mirror, a Tzimisce, Zero, an Assamite, 
Julian and myself. The younger ones came, went and died, but we became
close."

"Anyway, to cut a long story short, I met Frederika in one of the
cities we were out to smash. I knew her and trusted her, and she
seemed to want to join us. With a little convincing, she did."

"That decision wasn't a popular one with the pack or the Sabbat
higher ups. She was unwilling to reveal her past, and had enough power
that noone could force the information from her. Not that I really
cared, I knew she was against the Elders, and that was good enough for
me. I managed to convince Knight and Mirror that she would be useful
and Zero didn't have any complaints, so she was in. The Sabbat Elders
didn't like that decision, but as it was our decision, then that was
that."

"Frederika made it clear from day one that she wasn't going to become
involved in polictics and things like that. That associating with her
may stop our own advance in the Sabbat. Noone cared about advancing in
the Sabbat, so it was settled."

"We shared blood and our bond grew closer and closer."

"Mirror was sent on some special mission somewhere, and we met a Order
of Hermies Mage who was fighting the Tremere and had been sent to work
with us to fight their influence. It was a bit annoying having a human
in the group, but he seemed OK. Any enemy of the Tremere was a friend
of ours."

"After a while, I noticed that Frederika was drifting away from us.
Or atleast thats the way it seemed. When I thought about it more, I
realised that we were pulling away from her."

"She had always been a tenous member of the group, not trusted by the
Elder Sabbat or by the young members of the group. She was, after all,
more powerful than most of the Elders we were hunting."

"She had always said that she didn't want to become involved in Sabbat
politics, but that's exactly what we were doing. The more sucessful we
became, the less she could be a part of our sucess."

"One night, sitting round a fire, just like this, the unthinkable
happened. We started arguing. It started off small, but became heated
quite quickly. Zero and Frederika exchanged heated words."

"I wanted to intervene, but Julian stopped me, saying that I shouldn't
and they needed to work it out. I was surprised at how easy it was to
just watch Zero bad mouthing her like that."

"She seemed really upset and she snapped some very heated words in
Arabic, I think it was, back at Zero. She made some suggestion about
his clan and he struck her. We were all just so stunned."

"She lashed back and he went for his sword. We had never experianced
anything like it. We were bonded together by Vaulderie, this was
unthinkable."

"Obviously Zero was mad enough to be in frenzy, because he took a wild
swing at Frederika. She just stepped through it and pushed his warped
body into the fire, then she turned on the Mage and he just ripped
appart."

"Knight and I fled, confused into the night. By the time we returned,
the mage was dead, Zero was dust and Frederika was gone."




Frederika broke in, "It was Obedia. He had been taking my blood from
the Vinculum. Using it to keep himself alive. That's why he was hunting
me, for my blood. The mage became sloppy in his old age." The three of
them smiled at some personal joke.






"The Sabbat Elders were furious. They immediatly sent out packs to
hunt her down.", continued Ingrid.

"We ended up tracking her down. Wasn't too hard to piece together. She
had told us most of her travels, so if we were quick, we could catch
her at one of her previous strongholds. Those skills on hunting elders
came into play again."

"Something nagged at my mind. I realised that we wern't linked to her
anymore, but I could feel her link to us."

"To skip a few close shaves, we finally tracked her down with her
family of mortal relatives in the moutains in Italy. Knight ordered
backup and a quick strike. We stormed the place, meeting little
resistance. Our backup turned out to be a little too enthusiatic and
before we could really stop it, most of the Family had been butchered
and Frederika and her childer had been staked and were being tortured
and diablerised."

"Maybe my bond to her wasn't completly gone. For whatever reason, I
couldn't stand it and tried to stop it, but had little hope against 5
other packs, convinced that they had caught a traitor."

"To my dismay, Knight joined in and I saw him diablerise one of her
servants and then he moved on to Frederika and diablerised her too."






Knight shuffled his feet nerviously by the fire.

"That's something...". He coughed and cleared his throat.

"That night weights heavy on my mind. If there were some way I could
attone for it, I would, but I can't."

Aristotle looked confused, so Frederika explained.

"Lahn, beloved from my breathing days. She who kept the spark of my
family alive after I had given up all hope. She who had guarded my
children, selflessly for centruries. My most beloved child. She game
her life for me, sacrificing her own life for my own, in an attempt to
hide me from my enemies. She took on my form and let herself be taken
that I might escape."

Ingrid turned to Knight, "Things wern't the same after that. Knight
was consumed with guilt. He withdrew into himself. That just left me
to run the pack, so I had to become the Leader."

"But it wasn't the same. The friendship was gone, it was just a chore.
I became good at it, but it left me tired."

Knight continued, "And I knew that Frederika wasn't dead. I felt it. I
guess the Sabbat Elders knew too, because they started sending us on
the really hard missions. To try and get rid of us. I became more and
more convinced that Frederika had betrayed us, although I knew it
wasn't true, she was the easiest person to blame."

Ingrid turned to Frederika, "You deny it, but I still think you had
something to do with it. A few decades later, we came across Frederika,
in Torpor in the city we were attacking. Julian lost his head and
started to burn the place. He orderered it raised to the ground."

"I couldn't stand by and see that happen. I dragged Frederika free and
fled from the pack."




Knight took over the story effortlessly, as if knowing where Ingrid
was going, "With Frederika and Inngrid abandoning the pack like that,
the eyes of the Sabbat Elders examined our pack. We were split up and
I was questioned and put to trial. There was not enough evidence to
convict me, but sufficent doubt in the minds of the Elders that I was
stripped of rank. My skills made me too useful to destory, so they sent
me to various cities they needed taken. I was watched by everone I
went to work for."

"At times, I felt like leaving. Fleeing like the two of you had, but I
couldn't give up. I didn't know where the two of you were and I
couldn't take being alone. I needed the Sabbat."

"Although I could never remove the smell of betrayal, I was able
to gain some measure of independance by nature of my sucesses. By
suceeding at my missions and waiting for the Elders to move on or be
replaced, I ended up with a fair amount of freedom on how I conduct my
missions."

"When Zero's childer went off hunting Ingrid and Frederika, many
assumed that would probably be killed. Nothing more was heard from him
and over time, the memories faded. Noone fully trusted me, but I
encountered no direct opposition."

Frederika took over, "That would be because the Setites knew that I
had lost my connections with the Sabbat. They moved on to other
things, other ways of tracking me down."

"How did you end up here?", Ingrid asked.

"I knew you were here, and I assumed that Frederika would be close at
hand."

Ingrid, Frederika and Knight smiled.

Knight looked at Frederika, the smile draining from his face. "I'm
really sorry about Lahn. I don't know if I can ever make up for
that, can you ever forgive that?"

Frederika's face became full of seriousness. "No, I can never forgive
that. Truth be know, I think our snake friends are more likely
partially resposnible for that, but you gave into the weakness. It is
her Nameday soon, you can join me, remembering, if you wish."

As one, the three of them stood and joined hands in a circle. They
looked at each other, silent acknowledgements passing between them.

Aristotle sat and watched. Watched what he could never become a part
of.