The shockwave flooded Venice. The next day the newspapers would say that there had been an earthquake of some magnitude. Those that knew, knew that there was a far more sinister force at work.

They felt Xander's power unfurl. They felt Pestilence's rise up to meet it. They felt the two clash against each other, a battle of words and demonic force and will. They felt that Pestilence was the stronger, Xander a mere fly in comparison. And yet he would not be quashed so simply.

They felt the moment that Pestilence fell. When Xander's luck became just too strong, when his every hit landed well, when his every breath brought the right words to damage his opponent most.

Though many of them could not say why the Wish Granter would come to battle the Great Plague himself, they knew better than to get in his way once he was done. For Xander to defeat a Horseman, he had to have had a good reason to fight.

Xander walked from the half-demolished building in a dust covered suit, a piece of paper clutched tightly in his hand and his mind only focused on one thing.

"Sometimes in life, there are no answers," Xander heard someone saying as he stepped back into the apartment. Inside his pocket he had two names secured.

She was sat on the couch, Lust holding her hand and cooing at her in a way that he'd never seen the Sin do before. War was nowhere to be seen. Once the conflict had resolved itself, he was sure that she had found somewhere else to be.

"Why can't I remember anything? Why is it-"

She broke off suddenly when he entered the room. Her eyes were wide. She hadn't been crying, he saw, but she was confused. Lust wrapped an arm around her shoulders.

"You... You're... the Wish Granter," she said, shaking her head as though to dislodge her thoughts. Xander thought back to only a year ago, when her heart had cried out so forcefully that he had answered her. When she had been sat with no one and nothing to her name and wished for an escape.

He had taken that escape from her.

But now she was safe.

"I am the Wish Granter," he said, kneeling down in front of her. Lust was looking at him with wide eyes. "And you are my apprentice."

She looked confusedly at Lust, as though checking that it was true. Lust nodded her head and she turned back to Xander.

"Who am I?" she asked. Xander took her hand gently. The cut across it was still weeping slightly.

"Your birth name was Magdalena Katarzyna Wojcik. But I always called you Pani," he said. She took a deep breath.

"But that just means 'Miss'," she said, a hand going through her hair worriedly. She looked even more distressed.

"Would you like to tell me what you would like to be called then?" he asked. She took a deep, shuddering breath and then reached out with her injured hand to take his own. He could tell when her fingers brushed against his matching wound, how her touch became gentle and her lip caught between her teeth.

His apprentice was not a stupid girl. Even she would know that this must have been something she wished to happen.

"I think... I think I'd like to be called Kasia," she said. "It's short for Katarzyna."

"Kasia," he repeated. "And so it is then. Pleased to meet you, Kasia. My name is Xanudur."

He ignored Lust's wide-eyed stare, he ignored everything except the bright smile on Kasia's face.

"Do you mind if I call you Xander for short?" she asked. Xander took both her hands in his.

"No, not at all."