Once, there had been no answer save for the soft sounds of the cloistered air stirring gently in answer to Kirigan's presence. That secret, quiet place of observation had taken on it's rarest form: a thing observed, with its accordion tiers of dark oiled railings and cut post dividers staring back without blinking or flinching. The curve of its ceiling rises away from the interloper, and there at the centermost point of the dome overhead is set a two dimensional plaster of three hands joined over the hilt of a broken sword. In some over ornamental crook of the paneling lurks a perched bird with a watching eye. Carved into the base of one of the end row posts is the inanimate figure of a spider.

The room had lain dormant then, but had expressed no supple sign of bending. In a world designed by its occupants, this secret corner was bizarrely fixed. Inflexible.

Today, what bends in reply to the Kirigan is—

Maejyr Ralston, forward across the rail of one of the amphitheater's upper tiers.

He is dressed in a black coat. From a distance, it looks less drab than it will up close. Hooked too across the rail is the glinting, silvered handle of the man's imagined cane. The canine animal depicted there is all bared teeth and wolfish pinned ears.

So: as per usual.

"General."

Ralston has never seemed surprised to see him there.