This story takes place three years (and change) after the "famous disaster". It's based mostly on the ALW musical and film, at least visually. Erik's past, though, will always be Leroux (because, to put it simply, it's better that way), and I've been told that here is a distinctly Leroux feeling to the Phantom at times.

A warning of sorts: apparently my stories have a habit of… not ending, well, exactly happily. Who knows…? Not even I, yet. But I can promise it WILL be finished, in time.

EC / RC. Absolutely no Raoul bashing at all, so if you're looking for it, look elsewhere.

Disclaimer: you ought to know by now that I'm stealing all of this from better minds. Or, as my cousin said, "Is ALW still alive?" "Yes." "Oh, that's good. Usually geniuses like that are dead…"

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Of Knights and Dragons

Chapter I: Paris, 1874

"…passionate souls will seek pain."

(Brendan Francis)

The thing Christophé loved best about justice, he decided, was its absoluteness.

The police captain leaned back in his straight-backed wooden chair, fiddling with the pen in his hand, rolling it beneath his fingers, over and over, a slow rhythmic repetition. From his position he could look out the one regular square window set in the wall, directly out onto the Rue Scribe. This afternoon it was crowded with walking citizens and carriage-bound gentry, all heading who-knew-where. This station, Station Twenty-Four, was one of two in this—the Opera district of Paris.

The sound of the street filled Christophé's room, hardly muffled by the three-story journey up from the street below. It never ceased to amaze him how simply sound could travel paths made much more difficult for man himself; from street to third story or from mouth to soul. The officer's attention wasn't on the street, however, or the polished mahogany furniture that adorned this—the most successful station in all Paris—nor was it on the dimmed-down gas lamps perched on the walls. He rolled his pen over and over in his fingers, staring at the as-yet unsigned paper gracing the polished wooden desk.

A death warrant.

Christophé wasn't exactly sure, that bright July morning, who he hesitated. It wasn't the first he had obtained and issued in the past three-and-a-half years since the forcible retirement of his predecessor on the heels of that almighty disaster in the Opera Populaire (under the jurisdiction of Station 24). He had lost count of the number of 'kills' he had sanctioned in his time. A dozen? More?

No matter. He twirled the pen upright and set his name—Captain Christophé R. Doione—on the line, flicked the pen down, and carefully folded the letter in thirds. He drew a scrap of paper from his pocket, jotted down the accused's name, put 11:00, Rue Scribe x Rue Opera, and slipped the note into his pocket.

Christophé lifted his hat to his head, adjusted the lay of his jacket, and carefully made sure that his badge was securely fastened to his lapel. He rolled the pen aside, picked up the carefully folded page, and ducked into the adjoining office.

"One for the records, Cecile," he said to his secretary, purposefully ignoring her slightly upraised eyebrow as she made out the signed line and the fine, raised seal. She had become accustomed to the Latin phrase terminus est that graced it… if 'graced' was the right word. To her credit, though, she said nothing, merely filing the page away and marking it down in the records. She, too, had become used to the sight.

"Good day, monsieur," she said simply.

"And you, mam'selle," Christophé replied, tipping his hat as he started for the door. As it was he nearly collided with a junior officer on his way in. "Pardôn," the junior said, stepping back. "Cap'n, a note, addressed to you, arrived on the front desk."

Christophé snatched the fine paper from the other's hands and saw that it was, indeed, addressed to him by name alone. The scratchy handwriting of the black-inked words forestalled him from asking who had brought it. He knew already what the answer would bring; a look of confusion and a shrug. "My thanks," he muttered, brushing past the junior and down the stairs from his third storey office, the note clenched unread in his hands.

His first contact with Uriel had been the very day he had been installed as Captain of Station 24, hardly a week after the Opera fire. The subsequent disaster had ended with his predecessor ousted from Captaincy. The fine parchment of the first note had been resting on his desk one morning, pretty as you please, with no explanations attached. He had queried the staff—discreetly of course—but found no one untrustworthy, and to this day no idea how the letter had arrived on his desk in the first place… in the middle of a high-security police station.

It was then that Christophé began to respect the mysterious author and regard his claims seriously. The note was surprisingly plainly worded, and viciously chilling for all that. The man (or so he assumed it was a man, though there was no indication of it) offered his direct services to the Parisian police. The judicial network was… limited… in what it could do in certain situations, a fact of which it seemed Uriel was very well aware; he offered himself as a silent 'hand of justice' in such situations.

Assassin was, of course, a carefully avoided word; the existence of such a person was, in the least, illegal, never mind the havoc it wrecked in the moral realms of society. But part of the bargain, conveniently, was that the French government quietly pretend that the man did not exist… a concession that the government proved quite willing to grant, considering the circumstances.

So Station 24 had its hired killer, and the man kept his desired anonymity… and a hefty 30,000 Francs a month, a fine sum by any standard. Both sides, therefore, seemed content enough with the arrangement, at least for the moment. Christophé, understandably, could never shake the uneasiness that he was dealing with a possibly irate and certainly skilled killer whom he knew practically nothing about.

Yet the man had his uses. Among the station officers and the people of Paris he had become known as Uriel; not his real name, of course, not a man's name at all. But according to Biblical tradition Uriel was the fourth of the seven Archangels—the Messenger of Death sent to slay the firstborn sons of Egypt. Christophé thought the name rather… fitting, in a twisted way.

Their contacts, by Uriel's demand, had been brief (a fact for which Christophé was fervently thankful) and purely business when they did occur. They rarely actually met; the police chief arranged to have the name of the target dropped at some shop or post or other, and somehow it found its way into Uriel's hands. Once he had actually had the audacity to have the note tracked; it changed hands to less than three times before an icily worded warning found its way, somehow, into the chief's jacket pocket (without his knowing, no less!), at which point he had hurriedly desisted from the watch. He privately convinced himself that he didn't really want to know who Uriel was.

Now this. He unfolded the parchment, scanning it quickly. The wording was, not surprisingly, brief: An hour before midnight, at the junction of Scribe and Opera. Come alone. The Captain slipped the note into an inner pocket where it settled beside the one he had penned only a moment ago. The pair burned a hole in his pocket. "Seems I won't need to have it delivered," Christophé muttered through his teeth, striding out the front door and into the busy street.