Hurgan Stoneblade told speedily of a cult that had threatened him, that he had asked adventurers to find the dagger lest one of this group or worse was able to release the tanar'ri, a cult that worshipped as if it was a god. It had been the demonknight carrying that dagger, before— The innkeeper woke, his building in chaos; four attackers who had come to Shar-Teel's room lay dead, but with invisibility at least one had escaped, with that dagger and nothing else. His cook wasn't there—we were tired and we'd slept through the attack, I didn't know if— But we could only feel awake now.
"—And it's one of Shandalar's tendays at that," Hurgan said. "Takes himself off—Seosamh of Ilmater perhaps, none else we can call against them—"
"That is nothing, male. I'm willing to gut you myself," Shar-Teel said.
"—Aye, and spare me the trouble of dying by the tanar'ri! The bastards'd be holed up—just outside town an old estate, mansion of some Baldur's Gate lord who changed his mind—reckon that's most likely house, Thea at Mistress Mallory's spread gossip of odd lights about the place. Let me get my own hammer, lass, and Hurgan Stoneblade'll show ye his clan's pride—" He met her glare; she dropped him back in the chair.
"Demon—" Imoen whispered desperately, patting her robes and searching for things. "Gaze—"
"—Potion," I said, remembering her solution, "weakening—"
"Accepted, male." Shar-Teel said. "Outside here. No delays. How many?"
"The numbers I don't know. Yet once they unseal that dagger—" Hurgan raced to the door. "At least a score, less the ones ye say—"
"Get armed," Shar-Teel ordered; "they've invisibility—"
"I can use nature's power to sense footsteps," Faldorn said, dressed only in her leather tunic.
"Then fetch your weapons—" Shar-Teel turned on her heel.
"If they do— I'll give you the potion," Imoen said, pale and determined in her pink nightdress. "Enough for three doses, gazes. You, 'Jantis, Skie. I'll mirror image myself. Faldorn and Vic—well, you've got spells. Don't let it look at you! But I need... I'll catch up. I know the casting that weakens now, I've got to know it and how to beat it, give me time—"
Maybe we'll stop them before that. "Yes," I said. "Look at the spell. If Islanne did it, then we know you can."
Islanne's was the casting that weakened, Durlag's the blow that won. If Shar-Teel was strong as Durlag...
And the souls of Grael's band were the souls that lost.
"You made me think of how," Imoen said, and suddenly her arms were around my neck. "It'll be all right—"
I drew on the leather armour more quickly than ever before in our room; seized the Burning Earth, bow, shortsword. A sheaf of ice arrows. Two vials of potion. Lockpicks already tucked into the belt, just in case. Coil of rope. Running back down; finding Shar-Teel and the others joining with Hurgan and a yellow warhammer he held, chainmail over his clothing.
The old estate was east of the town, past a long segment of muddy and unplowed ground. We ran across it. Viconia managed to point to footprints in the dark, that someone had also crossed of late and the cultists—
A wide dark house, dilapidated; but there was a flash of something in one of the windows, perhaps a flickering candle—
No time for subtlety. Faldorn's wolf ran forward. Viconia looked down at the ground, and spoke: "Bones are buried here. I will raise undead—"
Then suddenly I felt her slap my face; my ears rung with it.
"It was your idea of that tower, rivvil," Viconia hissed. "I tell you so that you will know: if we battle a tanar'ri and somehow live through it, I am going to kill you. I will flay the skin from your body and rub the harshest rock salt I can find into each and every one of your wounds. I will purchase a fortune's worth of your surface lemons simply so that I can pour the juice over your bleeding flesh. I will hang you upside down by your toenails above a pit of boiling acid until your scalp sloughs away in small and painful gibbets of rotting flesh. I will remove your fingernails one by one with a rusted surfacer's dining implement. I will flay you again and feed you, piece by tiny piece, to flesh-eating beetles that crawl across your body into each crack and orifice, each part of your body that you consider most sacred. I will have it last for two months at least, and boil you in oil if you do not die prematurely. Then I will raise you from the dead and begin again until I tire of it, and when I tire of it I will feed your bones to umber hulks."
She could have spoken to Ajantis as well, or Shar-Teel, who'd taken Hurgan's request, I thought. She made her chant to Shar swiftly. Two boned shapes rose from the earth, darker than the night, hunched and trembling as they walked at her command.
"Keep them behind in case," I said, "I wouldn't think skeletons could be hurt by gazes that turn into undead..."
There was a doorguard. Robed like the bodies in Shar-Teel's room in the inn; guilty. I wore the right ring for the night: drew the bow, nocked the arrow, and the shot went to its target. She still had time to give a gurgling cry, slumping down and trying to pour a potion over her throat before the second arrow and the wolf upon her. Shar-Teel stepped up to the door and broke it to force our way in; they ought to have expected we would find them.
They met us with spells and blows. They chanted, priests and mages. Shar-Teel and Ajantis rushed forward to cut into their lines, Faldorn's wolf nipping at the casters' knees. The entryway of the old building was small but firmly built in stone; no room to aim a bow. In front of Viconia and Faldorn, I tried to keep them away.
Hurgan Stoneblade seemed everywhere at once. That golden warhammer of his whirled through the air like a mad dervish's pattern, his battlecry loud and for his dwarven family, striking into the knees of the humans who challenged him.
Two before me—bladesmen, one male and one female, lightly armoured below their robes and fast. Their eyes seemed to glitter with something; they could have been drugged, or lost in contemplation of what they worshipped—
I stepped between them; both blades tried to stab forward, and I ducked down out of the way. They didn't impale each other as they would have for a better rogue, perhaps; but they turned and I was still low enough to stab upward, into the man's groin—protected, of course, but the Burning Earth was strong enough to shear past that—
There would be nothing else but this. The man was on the tiled floor; the woman lashed out with her shield first, following with a thrust by her sword. The shorter blade, Shar-Teel says, is usually the one supposed to be used for blocking. Twist to push it to the right, just past my shoulder; then to her right flank with my left hand— She didn't cry out when the burning longsword ran down her side. Faldorn brought up her club on the woman's skull, and looked grimly pleased when she collapsed. You could see grey and red matter on the club... Then a greatsword swept toward me.
An armoured man, a knight, neared me in the melee. I heard Viconia cry out as a mage's missiles hit her skin. Over the man's plate was a symbol of—of red eyes above complicated black knots, something that confused in the midst of darkness. Too strong to turn aside properly. He was fast as Shar-Teel. You went for the armour's joints; you tried to speed faster than the opponent, use lighter momentum to get around and under their strikes. Like her he used a two-handed blade. Feint right-handed, force him to use that blade in a left parry; then thrust with the other at as unexpected angle as possible. The armour was connected by chainmail at the crook of his elbow; the burning longsword melted some of the links and strands. I'd expected him to cry out in pain, but instead he ignored it, pressing his attack. He panted; his eyes were unfocused as if he was drugged. His long reach stabbed above my shoulder.
Faldorn threw her grass seeds, calling Silvanus' name. The roots rose around the stone tiles of the floor. I knew to jump back to avoid them; the knight I fought stumbled when they wrapped around his feet, and that was an opening. A black spot between cuirass and fauld at his waist; the tip of the Burning Earth for that precise position, body angled to get out of the way of his greatsword long enough. There was the smell of burning flesh, the armour melted. It had to have been a gut wound, but he was still moving. I stepped back; pass to the right but I couldn't let him near Faldorn. Another figure was near in all the confusion a woman raising a heavy mace, her face bloodstained and sweaty.
Black smoke erupted across our faces. I heard a scream, perhaps an enemy caster. It stung our eyes; night vision couldn't help. And the Burning Earth—
A rogue ought to be able to hear properly, move properly. The knight attacked from the path of the fiery sword; I tried to parry, deflect, bend with his strength because I couldn't have taken him head-on. But in fact he was weakening—not as strong as he should have been, and then in all the smoke I heard him clank to his knees. The longsword, quickly, down through the back of his neck because there was that other coming after us. Faldorn shouted. I caught a slight gleam of armour; I stabbed with both blades, one at gorget-height and the other at waist. Then Viconia had finished shrieking some words in her language, and the black smoke died. I stood over the woman bleeding badly; Faldorn was on her knees but getting up, a hand raised to her head and chanting, the blue of healing gathering around her. I finished the task of killing the fallen cultist; not quite murder, the circumstances obviously—
Hurgan made an armoured priest fall, his golden hammer then brought down to crush a cultist skull. Shar-Teel broke a robed woman, her skin covered in what looked like grey stone, and turned to the next. The cultists were falling; we might have been in time after all. Viconia fired her crossbow high and hit an armoured figure in the eye. Shar-Teel was quick, Hurgan was unstoppable, Ajantis was cautious but he was against the wall, using it to help shield him while Varscona cut those who dared come near. I was still in front of Faldorn and Viconia, letting them bring down the enemies from a distance. Then there was a path cleared for us to go forward. The bleeding bodies lay still; Shar-Teel's armour was draped by blood and some...purple-red thing, around her left hand as if she'd squeezed someone's insides out by her gauntlet. Hurgan's beard was dark crimson, his mail no longer clean.
But we could hear chanting. The floor seemed to shake with it. They were summoning, I thought; it had to be some kind of magic, even I could feel it and Faldorn and Viconia were wide-eyed and uneasy, as frightened as we had to be. Shar-Teel saw it, a place on the floor that opened; Viconia came running.
"Trapdoor," Shar-Teel said; "down here—"
"Tanar'ri," Viconia panted, "there is ritual I practised with the Spider Queen—prepare advantageous position, sargtlsinss—simple, the Mistress of the Night allows it also, the power not in the ritual but the caster, spread the influence far enough and it shall never come—"
She sprinkled silver dust in a wide circle about the floor, calling to Shar. "For a particular priesthood ceremony of the Underdark we strongest priestesses lie with a powerful demon, you see, rivvil. We know of the rituals that restrain the creatures from doing otherwise than intended..."
Imoen's face came before me at that moment, screwing up the freckles on her forehead and sticking out her tongue. She'd be saying—Eww, Vic, aren't demons all...y'know, all spiked and everything? Ew! But Viconia finished her spell, hastily. I was just behind Shar-Teel, my hands on my bow. It was a stone room one saw down there below an off-angled staircase, very dark. The first thing that human eyes were drawn toward was a red circle across the ground. It did not glow, and so it should not have risen out of the dark as it did; and yet it was there as the centre of it all. Patterns lined its edge that drew a person into a nightmare where nothing was the true shape, twists in and on itself that were horrors all the more because they were nothing but abstract things that should never exist. Lines were either straight or curved, not both at the same time in the same place, not on any plane where geometry was true and up and down existed. The smell was old blood: rotting things, and something I could not know that lay above it.
But there were also eight people at the edge of this circle, and their bodies were surrounded by crackling lightning. Red-and-black robes whipped in a wind I could not feel; and the woman closest to us held high aloft the dagger from Durlag's tower.
I already had the first arrow in my bow, and loosed it. It touched her the moment before Shar-Teel's sword met her body. Her chant abruptly stopped; and yet she began to laugh. From behind us there was a crash in the upper room, something happening there—I brought another arrow to bowstring, had to stop this—
The chanting woman was falling, was bleeding. In front of her was Shar-Teel, her motion suddenly stilled, lightning dancing across her platemail, her hair crackling around her face, in pain, of course. Ajantis charged past her. He stabbed Varscona forward into the heart of the second chanter; the priest froze and fell back. On the opposite side of the circle, the second arrow went through a woman's neck: enchantment enough to pierce through their protections. Viconia stood behind. Her armour glittered a silvery blue from the ritual she had cast against demons. Faldorn said something harsh; a sling bullet of hers failed. Hurgan Stoneblade raced beside Ajantis. I could still hear the voices chanting, though it was hard to see lips moving in the darkness, in the flashing light. A third arrow loosed.
A male voice, a tenor lower than Garrick, behind us. "In the name of the One who Endures. For the kindness of the Crying One! For the protection of the lives of Ulgoth's Beard! Ilmater preserve us!"
We'd an ally: I saw blue light grow around us, past Viconia and into the room. Stronger than her; a gentle and peaceful light, even to those like me. Let no demon do harm. A fourth arrow's feathers were in my fingers, the motion as fast as I could make it. I knew Imoen's footsteps when I heard them, as well, and of course she knew all the spells. I dare to, I do hope—
We heard the woman on the ground, speaking. She was bleeding. Red lines like snakes crawled down the hand that held the dagger, rivulets and channels of what Shar-Teel had done to her. She would die. The lines and trails of blood wound down her bare arm, over her pale wrist, to the edge of the hand that held the dagger. I did not quite notice all of this at the time, but her words and her look were such that cannot be laid easily aside in memory.
"It...completes," she said, and in her face was a look of unforgettable ecstasy that I could never have seen before; not on the faces of those dosed with Black Lotus to bliss at Nashkel fair, no bard's song of joy and no lover's meeting. Afterwards I could not remember shape or colour of her eyes, but knew only that they were alight and pure as a comet's white trail in the sky, as it looks to a human. Her skin glowed with sweated exhaustion. "You have...shown what was needed. Aec'Letec awakes."
I saw the blinding smile on her features and I saw her die at the moment that the blood from her mortal wound touched the dagger's hilt. The arrow fell softly from my hand.
You could not look directly. The red circle...was no more. A shape, sulphur and brimstone stench as the pit Kirinhale had disappeared to, a large—entity, large thing—all black and red and wings. Still figures around it, a few living. The chanting was silent. The living chanters were boneless; in an instant they collapsed to the stone as bags of flesh. The being grew by their deaths. Ajantis had stumbled back, his sword arm limp. Hurgan Stoneblade stared gap-mouthed. Shar-Teel was moving again at last and she did something with her sword; it flashed forward and purple even if it was small, she was small compared to that aberrant thing.
Viconia was the first to speak; her voice was a shriek. "Retreat, abbil! Retreat, all!"
There were blue protections, suffusing the ceiling, lowering down over that cellar. We obeyed. Something howled and roared—boiling breath on our heels, acidic on skin—the trapdoor slamming down. A desperate, panting pause. It hit below our feet. The floor shook.
The Ilmatari prayed. "Let no harm come. Let the hellbeast be returned to its planes. Let none suffer." He wore a grey and sweat-stained sleep-robe; he was middle-aged and slightly overweight, breathing harshly. Imoen stood beside him, her robe over her nightgown, supplies and scrolls and blue ceramic flasks in her hands. "The—the holy water," he said to her; she took the flasks and spilt the water on the ground, above the trapdoor, across the floors. The Ilmatari kept his prayer and Viconia shuddered. I reached for the potion Imoen had given me; drunk down my share quickly, while the stone floor shrieked and the thing moved below. Shar-Teel did the same; Ajantis bent over Faldorn—
"Take it," he ordered her. "I know—responsibility—it is important, and you are powerful—"
"Then if I am powerful I don't—" she said with scorn.
"There's no time," Ajantis said, and pressed the potion to Faldorn's hand and in his next movement patted the head of the squirrel on Faldorn's back, his gauntlet surprisingly gentle over it, as if in farewell. He stood on Shar-Teel's right before the shaking trapdoor with Varscona unsheathed and the simple buckler upon his left forearm, as if that alone would fend off a tanar'ri.
The demon's gaze that is not a gaze, but a look into your soul. The potion made your eyes mirrors, made your body mirrors, silver polish and fresh water and unshattered glass. I wished I'd thought to give mine to Hurgan. In the darkness there had been two black eyes, or a hundred black eyes, eyes in eyes on eyes like the million facets of a spider, layers of eyes and a face that was not a face and thorns, limbs, razor wings that beat... The priest was on his knees; Imoen brought her own mirrors, the images of her that danced around her true self, scrolls and spell ingredients readied in each pair of hands. Ice arrows I brought to my bow. I won't betray you, Imoen; she, friends, the demon came and protecting them was the reason.
The shaking diminished, a little. The Ilmatari was on his knees, sweating; Viconia glanced contemptuously down at him.
"Weak male deity," she spat. "Do not gain complacence." Shar-Teel and Hurgan and Ajantis stayed by their post at the trapdoor; the holy water on the floor had seemed to darken and tarnish on the ground, the blue light of the prayers stained by red. Imoen had poured down more water to replace it; the last flask emptied.
The Ilmatari shook his head. "Ilmater helps all who hurt," he said gently to her. She scowled again.
"Within Underdark, I would show you..."
Imoen began to chant a spell; "Just in case," she said. I felt her transmutation rush through me, speeding reflexes, making foes seem to move more slowly, spreading to Shar-Teel and Ajantis and all of us. But I dared to think that maybe the tanar'ri had gone. Conjurations had a duration of time, I knew that much, and the trembling below our feet had continued to weaken after all.
Then the outer doors opened. Debris, flying splinters, flew past; I half-turned, the explosion almost slow. Dodge and move as if it were blades instead of flying swords; take a splinter to the shoulder instead of a brick through the neck, dance away from it.
It rose before us. Coated by black earth. Dug out and above instead of by the trapdoor, and it was luck that it attacked us and not the town... The eyes slid past me. Mirrored. Imoen was behind me, mirror image on mirror image. Faldorn and Viconia were close to it, and both were screaming, coated by dust and splinters.
Ajantis was first there; the spell gave him speed. He barrelled through Faldorn and Viconia; pushed them out of the way, shielded them with his whole body.
They fought the hideous tanar'ri Aec'Letec...
It had scales, and hornlike polish upon parts of its mass. It moved too quickly for its weight, too lightly and yet strong enough to tear anything. It had limbs and wings and talons, uncountable. Razor-sharp. Parts of it as if several womb-formed wyverns were conjoined into a mess of flesh bulky as a slime. Parts of it dead salmon black eyes. To look at all of it at once was impossible.
A demon.
The potion's protection didn't last an eternity. I ran to the back of the room; and strung the bow for the first shot. Hurgan and Shar-Teel went forward, and I swear that Shar-Teel was smiling. The priest was beside me, flat on his back, knocked away. His lips moved and his prayers continued in whispers.
"Shar," Viconia screamed, "grant your servant sanctuary!" She, not far from the demon, melted into inky darkness; no longer in view. I sent the first arrow above Ajantis' head. It was a large target. Imoen, dusty and wounded in all of her images, began to cast.
Faldorn's wolf leaped up and upon the tanar'ri. It bit; then a wing and two limbs moved. The demon sunk talons deeply into the wolf, slipped what might have been black teeth into its neck as if to consume it. The demon flung the scraps of fur to the ground; they melted away from view. Second arrow hit.
"Your kind bleeds," Shar-Teel said, gloating, the sound of her voice nothing short of satisfied, and she was faster than the limbs could move. The blood of the demon burned and boiled, like molten iron, the stench of sulphur and brimstone. The tanar'ri struck, but the undead Viconia had raised came to fight. Hurgan Stoneblade called the name of his clan and his ancestor, and the golden hammer whirled and hit. None of it slowed or stopped the demon. It crushed the first of Viconia's skeletons with one swipe of a limb.
The Ilmatari whispered his prayers, and the demon's face—parts of the demon's face—looked at him. He grew pale; the vast black shape surged forward, escaping Shar-Teel and the dwarf; the razor-sharp wings bent in a way wings weren't supposed to, forward and over its black eyes, edges like many swords crossing over. Imoen flung herself aside, though her voice did not falter for one moment. I grabbed at the priest's shoulder, trying to drag him—
"Don't do that, young lady! Hold and wait..." He kept his prayers to his god; I rolled aside, under the buffet of that—of that motion. But his pleadings were a pitiful flicker in the face of that, the tanar'ri with the gaze that was not a gaze, they say Ilmater is a favoured target of demons—
Faldorn released her cry to Silvanus, and the ground moved. I saw stalagmites rise from the ground crafted from the tiles. Sharp and spiked; they arrested the demon in its motion, rising up and under and piercing that dark flesh, sparing the priest. Ajantis shouted:
"Behind it, Faldorn! Let it not..."
Faldorn grimly nodded, and the stone rose at her command to block the door. The demon was sealed. It had heard Ajantis' cry, and gazed upon him. He shouted; he was forced to stand still, transfixed by the glare. But the grip of his right hand was still upon Varscona; and then Imoen finally finished her spell. Pale yellow light broke from her fingers in a narrowed beam and entered the demon's body. Its skin glowed softly, as if what she had done laid separation across its scales, the rough and distorted coverings of its body; as if parts of it were inside out, black things beat near to the wings... The demon paused, eyeing her. A mirror image blinked out as easily as a candleflame. Another arrow to it.
"—Can never allow a demon to harm—!" Ajantis broke from that thrall, and thrust Varscona forward and deep into Aec'Letec's scales, Hurgan Stoneblade hitting low. The demon's roar was rusty nails flying through the air. It snapped at them. Claws hit Ajantis' armour, flinging him back. Shar-Teel went forward in his place.
Imoen was mouthing something. The sounds drowned it out, but One more! her hands gestured, and she began to repeat the casting movements. Viconia's skeletons kept lurching at Aec'Letec, and because they were already dead it couldn't gaze at them, could only rip them apart. At his belt Ajantis grasped a small flask and brought it to his face, lying where he was. He stood again; then he marched toward it, drew claws away from Hurgan and Shar-Teel. And he screamed. I knew not what he saw.
"—Our souls feed the beast!" Ajantis turned his head; his eyes were dark as if he had been punched around them. Then he spoke again, and his voice was more like his own: it was as sorrowful as that moment beneath the Cloakwood mine, though in the time since then his voice had deepened. "Then there is nothing more you can do to me, demon. It is a small price for your own death."
Ajantis threw himself to it, atop it, and I swear that for that moment he was even faster than Shar-Teel. Varscona's cold blade, light as a silver ribbon in the air, cut down and through. There were—giblets—of black flesh, some still jerking and moving, flung from Aec'Letec's thrashing body, and the many eyes looked to Ajantis and Ajantis alone. Shar-Teel hacked at a limb, the dwarf with her: and still she had that smile.
Then the razorblade wing shot out; Faldorn fell to the ground, a cut deep in her chest. Ajantis repeated a battlecry—For Helm, as if he had forgotten for the moment—his voice desperate. I saw the priest start to run to Faldorn, but then dark shadows spun and took form: Viconia instead made her calls for Shar with her hands placed against Faldorn's blood. The sweating priest nodded.
Imoen's second spell took, and I had aimed ice arrows into that wing; the demon's body convulsed. She nodded, and signalled with her hands, speaking with her voice; Now! And then: It makes 'em vulnerable to magic—and there's spells going right into that corner!
The Ilmatari caught the understanding. He raised his hands, and blue seared from them. I saw the demon shaking, even as I aimed the red arrow so that it would not miss. It flew from the bow, the thought of hurting the tanar'ri within my mind: and something returned even as the arrow bit into its mark. Scrapes and scratches closed over my body, a cold feeling like the red hands. The demon healed me by that shot—
It was a bad thing to do. But I wasn't a demon, and we had to stop it. Imoen had a glowing pink-orange orb between her hands, and threw. It burst against the demon's scales and seemed to do nothing, but she had a second to her fingertips; and as I was down to five arrows, a third orb came from her, and her smile almost echoed Shar-Teel's.
Viconia held up crossbow bolts, pronouncing words upon them; and aimed carefully in her place beside Faldorn. Together Shar-Teel and Hurgan separated the limb they attacked, and then Shar-Teel drove her weapon deep into the bleeding flesh while the dwarf's hammer hit down upon a wing, weakened and falling to his height. Ajantis was still above, holding the demon's gaze, the cold sword running across eyes while the darkness at his own eyes did not abate—
Imoen's fourth orb hit, and again no effect was obvious. Her hands spared the time to speak briefly: One more. Lady Luck, right? they said, and biting her lip she wove what she could.
The sphere was bright pink and orange in the air, and flew like an arrow. Then it hit; and between two red scales it appeared to pierce through, somehow melting into what lay below. It dissolved, and yet seemed to spread into the demon's body. The demon stopped.
Aec'Letec froze in place, and moved no more.
"Yeah—!" Imoen whistled, screamed. She'd done it: defeated a tanar'ri. Made it vulnerable, cast exactly the right spells...
There was no time. The dagger was cracked; on Hurgan's yell we cut not merely the one slice of Durlag's that slew it before but many cuts, shearing and chopping. It surely could not rise again if it was in sufficient pieces...
All of us were forward, swarming it. There was no chance to contemplate any we did, only to cut to try to save Ulgoth's Beard from its power. For a creature that came from fiery hells, the Burning Earth could cut through it oddly well...as if the fire within it were not quite elemental fire, and likewise distinct to the fires of the Abyss. Hurgan Stoneblade slammed his hammer into scales, shattering obsidian-like jagged bones in each furious blow. The demon's eyes no longer had power to gaze. Shar-Teel cut out something like a heart from the body.
And then at some point the frozen tanar'ri was gone. Black stains of brimstone remained on the tiles, as if the places Aec'Letec had fallen were the remains of a common house fire. A sooty black, like the ghost of dark smoke. Shar-Teel stuck the end of her blade between the tiles on the ground, and leaned heavily upon its hilt. I saw Ajantis set down Varscona away from himself, and carefully lower his shield. Our eyes met. I had seen much the same in the face of the ghoul Grael: the hero whose soul was lost.
—