"An alliance doesn't mean love, anymore than war means hate."

It was two mornings ago that the envelope was to arrive at the enormous castle, a castle which cast it’s vast shadow down upon that quaint little kingdom tucked between the unmapped territory of phat monsterland. This particular letter wasn’t directed just any resident, but to the king of the castle himself, Gil Vessalius.

If the unmistakable serpent-headed seal didn’t give him indication as to what the note regarded, it was imaginable that the wiry cursive font that sprawled the page explained it perfectly. Basilisk Fang may have been a name Tartarus recognized whether it be by a previous conflagration of reports on the guild that had since smoldered or through a primitive knowledge of their neighboring dark guilds.

How Tartarus knew the Fang now was not important. What was important was how they were arranged to know one another from now on, as allies. Basilisk Fang was a guild which stood on its own for generations without any sort of aid from the illegal world, but now, such aptitude was hard for the organization. The master of the Fang knew should they continue at this pace, none of the illegal factions would triumph in a war with the law. Her proposition was a simple one, for there two guilds to grow off of one another's power and in the future operate in certain ploys together; with a conjoined but a greater army, one that marveled anything Fiore’s legal world had seen. The last lines of the letter gave Tartarus little choice and only time to prepare. The guild master of Basilisk Fang would be there in a few days time to meet on the matter.

~~~

Another evening had now cast itself over the land of large monsters and the hidden kingdom in its commons. By the time the shadow mage made it to this particular settlement the sun had completed its tour for the day now to be replaced by myriad stars that dotted the inky canopy. A low, waning crescent moon hovered tenuously within the twilight firmament, bestowing a very dim illumination upon the land. It was a cool, windy night; the swaying of trees and sigh of leaves could be heard but not seen, as the encompassing darkness had blotted out all but the faintest light.  Though the darkness was the last of her worries as she followed the kingdoms lonely and currently devoid path, azure optics locked on the titanic castle in its center.

It wasn’t long before the Basilisk queen herself was on her way up the flight of endless steps to the citadel. And many moments later, when her ascent finally came to a close, she was faced with those ginormous doors, doors that might as well been built to compensate a family of giraffes. The only source of light here came from a few of the lit windows inside the keep and a burning torch embedded in the wall just right of the door jam. The mage cleared her throat and doing such swallowed down any underlying anxiety. The bare pads of her feet shuffled soundlessly against the cobblestone beneath. Inevitably bringing her forward to the great door; the blazing torch to the woman’s right left the otherwise pale contours beneath her hooded profile touched by a scarce, fiery, glow. Her digits reached forward and coiled around one of the hanging rings of the doors handle. It was then that three paced knocks sounded through the halls interior.