The road wound deep into the sheltered basin of stone, two features of the landscape which seemed suspiciously too well-hewn to be anything other than the work of those who had once founded the settlement. Isaviel could hear the howling of the wind about the lofty city, but the icy winds never reached her with quite the ferocity that they had further up, beyond Arvahn's influence. As impressive as such engineering was, almost as much so as the glittering aesthetic of the buildings now not far ahead, she could not help but wonder why anyone would go to such trouble. The frozen north was difficult enough to endure without choosing such a difficult place.
"Abandoned. Nothing breathes in that city," Bishop's voice sounded from up ahead as she rounded the last corner in the road, the ground levelling out beneath her feet.
The ranger was leaning against the partially fire-blasted remnants of a crumbling marble archway, its once delicate carving all but entirely stripped of the gold which had once gilded it. Bishop was spinning his bow in front of himself nonchalantly, watching Isaviel from the corner of his eye as she approached in the darkness, only the pale moonlight to give him a hint that she was there. She offered him a wry smile as she approached, but he did not return it, looking back around to the wide street beyond them, where strands of granite glittered in the stone under the stars.
"Surely an empty city is better than one teeming with enemies?" the Moon Elf pointed out, her hand automatically going to the hilt of the Sword of Never when she saw the ranger's jaw clench at her words, and how sharply he shook his head.
"Like I said, there are things watching us up there," he nodded at the crags looming around the north side of the city, and when he looked back at her his eyes glinted dangerously, black as the night around them, "And Captain, you know as well as I do that this place is haunted," he sucked in a breath and stood tensely, giving her a light push over the threshold of the broken archway, "I say I'd take a hearty ambush any day."
"Your words are full of suspicion," Zhjaeve noted as she reached them, and Isaviel did not bother looking around, knowing the Githzerai was coming to stand by her side, "You should have more faith in our Knight-Captain. And those who dwell here will not harm us. There is too much at stake…on both sides."
"I don't like riddles," Bishop snarled with unconcealed menace, and Isaviel was increasingly aware from his tone of just how uncomfortable he was – not even the ranger was normally this aggressive, "I like riddlers even less. And she's your Knight-Captain, not mine."
"You can feel the pull of their souls, can you not?" Zhjaeve asked unconcernedly of Isaviel as she at last reached her side, looking ahead down the wide road which was flanked by the crumbling stone houses, and onwards up to the arcing skeleton of the shimmering cathedral-complex ahead.
"Yes," the Moon Elf admitted softly.
Subconsciously, she pressed a gloved hand against the scar on her chest, feeling the hum of Akachi's hunger in her chest. As she looked more closely at the massive building at the centre of the visible city, she saw the glint of blue-white light, of something shimmering beneath the stars. A jolt of pain shot through her scar and she flinched, biting her lip to stop from crying out as a flash of red burst behind her eyes. Hunger. Though her heart began to gallop with something verging on panic, Isaviel ground her teeth and nodded firmly, leading the Githzerai's gaze to the glinting object just visible up ahead.
"It's up there. They're up there."
"The magic in this place is strong and…very strange," Sand hissed from close behind Isaviel, but she just winced and kept her eyes fixed on the glittering walkway curving in its upward spiral ahead of her.
It felt they had been walking for hours, but the starlit sky remained as pure as it had at their appearance on the mountain ledge. The walk to the cathedral had not been difficult; the main road had led straight to it, and it was certainly hard to miss. Whoever had built the place had done so with the intention that it be visible at all times throughout the city, a construction which even after millennia of disuse remained breath-taking, though huge chunks of marble and granite had fallen around its foundations.
As they had stepped within the skeletal walls of the eerily shimmering building, Isaviel had felt a pull on her being, an insistent discomfort that made her grit her teeth and kept her headlong course swift. Driven in such a manner, she had led her companions almost immediately to the double stairway ahead of them, and from there out onto a balcony which overlooked an enormous pool of silvery water, at least twice the size of the Blacklake in Neverwinter which had once so impressed her.
A dauntingly narrow walkway twisted around of the massive pillars by the balcony, and far above it was a graven ledge of white marble, gilded and inlaid with untarnished silver even after so many countless years. Something glinted ahead of it, and as they ascended Isaviel could feel her heart pounding ever harder. There was a buzzing in her ears, and she was very aware of the shards in her pack. Twice she faltered, overtaken by Akachi's memories of the true Sword of Gith, a massive greatsword raised aloft before a roaring army under a familiar grey sky, all in hopeless defiance of a god. The sword did not save my grandfather. It only gave him enough power to give his god an excuse to turn him into a monster.
"Looks to me like we're being set up for a long fall," Bishop noted drily from further back, and Casavir's responding sigh was audible as well, "What's the matter paladin? Think you might sink in all that plate mail?"
"This is the right place," Zhjaeve countered as Isaviel turned the last twist in the pathway and reached the carved ledge which was their goal, stopping in her tracks with Sand at her side, "Know that we must call on the spirits of the dead here. It is never an easy thing to converse with those who no longer live in this world, but it is even harder to have dealings with those who dwell neither in this one nor the next."
Those ringing words seemed to give even Grobnar pause, for his previously incessant humming faltered, immediately followed by the ominous ring of silence as he stopped altogether, and the echoing clanking of his golem's footsteps along with him. Isaviel hardly noticed, reflexively putting an arm out to stop Sand from approaching the beautiful object hanging in the suddenly icy air before them.
"The dragon's heart," Zhjaeve breathed once the whole group had joined Isaviel and Sand at the top of the spiralling pathway, shivering in the still cold, "The anchor for those restless souls who dwell here."
Before the group, hanging in the air below a broken granite arch span an enormous crystal heart, sparkling and shimmering in the moonlight, its many facets sending sprays of rainbow colours across the floor, the crumbling walls of the atrium and the balcony beyond. As Isaviel took a tentative step forward into that dizzying room, the ground seemed to shift momentarily beneath her feet and she flinched against the pain that twisted in her heart. A flash of a memory, tinged with grey fog, passed before her eyes, of a woman weeping at her feet, of a feeling of miserable helplessness as that woman was dragged away. One of many. Akachi's voice brushed against her consciousness like gravel on her skin.
With a shudder, Isaviel cast an uncomfortable glance back at her companions. Zhjaeve was staring at her with all of the compassion of the broken statues they had passed on their way there, while Casavir and Sand wore looks of almost identical concern. Grobnar was gawping at the heart, his eyes so wide that Isaviel fancied she could see the hovering crystalline construction reflected within their depths, the golem looming behind him, its eyeholes glowing with purple light. Bishop was eyeing her suspiciously from the back of the group, and only glared when she caught his eye.
Sighing, the Moon Elf turned back towards the heart and the balcony beyond, stepping ahead with more purpose. They expected her to lead them, and to know what to do – they could not have known that she had led them to this place because of the pull on her soul, that of the hunger of Akachi. Only Zhjaeve and Sand seemed to have an inkling of the truth, and only they followed her onto the balcony. Casavir had taken it upon himself to stand watch at the entrance to the atrium, but Isaviel suspected that his intention was more to keep Bishop from bolting. Grobnar still stood transfixed, only now he was closer to the heart, his hands reaching out…and the ranger unsheathed his sword and pressed it to the Gnome's collarbone with a warning snarl – none too gently, but at least with the flat of the blade – to stop him from touching the crystal structure.
"What am I supposed to do now?" Isaviel demanded of Zhjaeve once they and Sand had stepped ahead of the others, once more fully out under the glinting starlight which hung both in the sky above and the rippling black waters of the vast pool below them.
"We must wait," the Githzerai told her confidently, her veil and hood flapping about her face in the suddenly bitter winds but doing nothing to muffle her words, "They know we are here, do not doubt that."
As if sensing Isaviel's hidden trepidation, Sand's hand found hers, hidden from sight by the bulk of their winter cloaks. Though she wished she did not want his support, she found that she did regardless, and sent him a smile for his gesture. How easily he could forgive her! How hopelessly he seemed to trust her! Who else was there who really trusted her? Had there ever been anyone else?
"You dare to come here? To disturb our rest?" a voice swelled from below them and Isaviel leaned forward over the rail despite her fear, ignoring Sand when he tried to pull her back.
The hunger in her was rising even as she saw the waters frothing and roiling, parting to reveal a shimmering silver mass of ridged scales, uncoiling as the voice came again, rumbling like a clap of thunder around the broken stones.
"Were I not chained to this deathless existence I would scatter your shattered bodies to the winds for trespass."
"You are the great wyrm himself," Zhjaeve spoke up unexpectedly before Isaviel had time to think, and the Moon Elf was, for once, glad for the Githzerai's calm and measured speech, "We have been looking for you." Her yellow eyes looked up at the steadily materialising serpentine form before them.
A rumble travelled through the stone beneath their feet, as if the dragon was laughing at them as his ghostly scaled head came into view before them, his enormous body pawing the air as if he stood on solid ground. The translucent wings which he unfurled from his back seemed to fill the width of the lake before them, though that could not have been the case in his life. No dragon ever was that large.
Staring up at him, at the way his scaled skin curled back from his knife-like teeth in an almost human sneer, at his empty eye sockets which looked large enough to walk through, Isaviel found herself gripping Sand's hand very tightly indeed as her scar burned with pain. Akachi could sense the power of this creature's ancient soul and he wanted it for himself.
"You are here," the dragon sighed, pacing closer, bringing his enormous head down to their level so that Isaviel could make out the glinting points of light which glowed within his skull, the semblance of long-gone eyes, "Because you need my help once more, though you always refuse my price."
"We know nothing of your price," Isaviel told him now, and a grinding snarl rang through the cavern in response, "Tell us what you would have for your help…"
"You have no idea what it means to be caged," the dragon cut her off easily, and she sensed her friends bristling behind her as he reared up, glaring down at the trio on the balcony from on high, "When last I told you of my needs, you rebuffed me and took what I knew. I will not make the same mistake again. I have been trapped in this place with the souls of the mournful for millennia," his voice thundered through the air and shook them where they stood, ringing in their ears and shaking their bones, rendering Isaviel momentarily incapable of so much as looking up once more to the ghostly monster, "How could you think to cage a creature of the Planes? No. I will tell you nothing. Together we shall remain here, and you will come to know a small piece of what I endure."
The hum of powerful magic replaced the ringing in their ears, and Isaviel grew stiller even than she had been before, her heart pounding painfully. She could hear Grobnar exclaiming in dismay, and Bishop's cursing, but could hardly bring herself to look around. When she did, Sand white-faced beside her, she saw the shimmering wall of energy that blocked her path from the balcony, Casavir uselessly attempting to shoulder it down. The sight might have been ridiculous had it not enraged her so, but instead of laughing as she hoped she would do in years to come she span back around and glared up at the dragon gloating before her. Wrenching her hand free from Sand's she stepped forward once more, eyes flashing red.
"This is madness," the Moon Elf spat, "You speak as if you know me, and clearly the millennia have addled your mind. We seek your help to defeat the ancient threat which I am sure will come for your tattered soul in time, and the power he knows no doubt will extend to even beings such as yourself. I am Isaviel Farlong, daughter of Esmerelle of Evereska, and my grandfather was Akachi the Betrayer who defied the God of Death himself. I am here to learn how to lay waste to the shadows, and I will not be denied."
The silence that followed had them listening intently, for the shape of the dragon had dwindled once more to barely a wisp of silver light. Isaviel could barely hear anything over the pounding of her own heart for several long moments until she could steady her breath and the red mist across her vision receded. Sand was staring at her with a mixture of awe and fear, but Zhjaeve, at her other side, looked pleased – from the smile that showed in her eyes.
"You know, Sir Paladin, I do believe your endeavours will prove quite fruitless," Grobnar was offering plaintively behind them, "Such a creature as this could likely keep up that barrier for many decades. Of course, our friends might not make it all that long in those icy winds without any food…"
"A threat…of shadow you say?" the dragon's mighty voice silenced the Gnome and any insults which had been being prepared for him, "Of what shadow is it that you speak?"
"The King of Shadows has returned to this plane," Zhjaeve explained immediately, "If he is not stopped…"
"I know all too well of the importance of stopping one such as him, to my cost," the monster cut in all but morosely, his form once more shimmering into sight before them, coiled now upon the air much further across the chasm, "But this changes things…for you. I have not heard that cursed name of late…and not for a lifetime before the warlock came with his lies. My hatred for the Illefarn who entrapped me in their home is but a pale flame for the loathing I know for the King of Shadows," he took a deep breath and unfurled himself once more, "I am Nolalothcaragasint. You may settle with Nolaloth. Once I was a great power of crystal and I knew not the boundaries between the Planes, for all of existence in this universe was my road to take. No longer."
"Then it appears we have a common enemy," Isaviel pointed out quickly, and the creature's head inclined to look at her with just a hint of curiosity, "And we are not of Illefarn, so you need not make an enemy of us."
The rumble of the dragon's laughter set Isaviel's teeth chattering, and she glared up at him as he spoke once more, his voice carrying the weight of patronising amusement.
"Oh, little child," he chided, "I see in you, shining as brightly as your own, the soul of one who has walked the Planes almost as widely as I have. I know what you are, Spirit-Eater, for you carry with you the soul of a being not unlike the monster I fought millennia ago, our 'common enemy'. In order to defeat him, you must know more of him, and of the curse you bear. And you must learn that in a war like the one you endure those who you hate are not always your enemies, any more than those you love are certain to be your allies. Such truth do I know, for I dwell here with the wretched spirits of those four of Illefarn who trapped me here, until such time as their creation may be destroyed."
"Can you tell us how to reforge the Sword of Gith? I must speak with the other souls here," Isaviel pressed, drawing herself up in as much of a show of bravery as she could, "Though I know it will not come without a price."
"Of course," Nolaloth agreed, still with that same mocking tone, "I have endured too many millennia bound to this lifeless existence. Once you have looked into my heart and spoken with the spirits who have bound themselves to its power, I ask that you destroy it. Kill me at last. I tire of everything."
His voice had already begun to dwindle, his form receding as Isaviel leaned over the rail of the balcony, watching his essence drifting slowly back down into the lake, calling after him.
"And the sword? How can it be reforged?"
"You must look past the pale shadows its broken pieces cast. Remember how it shone as a beacon of power across the Planes and how, once, you knew how to wield its power."
Again silence rang in the cavern of graven marble and granite, illuminated by the impossibly reflective heart spinning behind them, broken at last by the clattering of Casavir's armour as he stumbled through onto the balcony when the magical barrier receded. Not daring to think too hard about what she must do, Isaviel took that telling sound as her cue and turned sharply, her deep blue hair whipping around her in the icy wind, and strode past the bewildered paladin.
"I must admit that was far less helpful than I had anticipated," Sand noted dryly as the group of adventurers gathered around Isaviel expectantly.
"How can you remember what the sword was like whole when you never saw it as anything other than shards?" Grobnar inquired rather politely, hopping aside when Isaviel continued past him, stopping only once she was staring deep into the refracting chambers of Nolaloth's enormous crystal heart.
"Somehow I'm going to guess it's all got something to do with that curse her dragon friend mentioned," Bishop pointed out snidely, but Isaviel was barely listening.
"Surely you do not meant to trust in the word of the dragon, my Lady?" Casavir demanded.
"I believe she must do if we are to have a hope in this war," Sand told him wearily.
Isaviel tore her gaze from the heart long enough to send him a smile. He just nodded in return, and with an unwilling sigh, fearing what she would find among the souls of the Illefarn, Isaviel placed her gloved hand upon the surface of Nolaloth's heart, icy to the touch even through a thick layer of fur. For the third time that day, the ground whirled under her feet.
Images span before her eyes. The great grey City of Judgement and the enormous army assembled before it long ago, and how the sword of Gith had gleamed in her hand, humming with power , ready to strike; primed like a bow pulled back for a killing shot. Again she saw through her grandfather's eyes, fogged with the mistiness of memory, seeing Eveshi running towards him, laughing, with golden eyes sparkling so happily. Neither of them had wings then, though the symbol of Myrkul hung on the tapestry behind the child, a ghastly overseer of an otherwise homely image as a willowy young woman joined the father and son in Akachi's memory. With thick black hair hanging down to her elbows and flawless dusky skin she was beautiful, her faint smile and those fathomless dark eyes giving her an aura of ethereal mystery. Akachi's memory of her was full of love…and despair.
The scene changed then, darkening, and Isaviel felt herself thrown forward – if not bodily, then certainly temporally – and she saw it all; the ruthless string of sacrifices made, the obscure rituals Akachi had performed all in service of his evil god and how, for his faith, he was chosen. Akachi and Eveshi were plucked from their sleeping bodies and transformed as Seraphim of the God of Death, great feathered wings upon their backs. They were Devas, servants to a god, and their pride had been boundless as they stood there before their mighty lord in his hall of skulls. But suddenly the memories filled with rage and misery and Isaviel saw as though through her grandfather's eyes how he had longed to return to his wife, and how he had been denied. Believing him killed, stolen by her god, she had begun to lose faith and even to pray to other, more just divinities.
The clearest memory of all came next, and with it the salty taste of tears, and blood. And the smell of smoke amidst those horrible screams. Akachi had been sent down at last to see his wife, or so he believed, and had waited dutifully but expectantly in the inner sanctum of Myrkul's temple in Mulsantir, his old home town. It was a dark place, cold, of grey stone with an ominous replica of the Wall of Faithless across its far side, carved as a reminder of the fate that awaited those who betrayed the gods in life.
At last she had been brought before him, only there had been no smiles, not so much as a single happy word, for she had been dragged to his feet, bound in thick black chains, hopeless fear in her eyes. When he had told the guards to unhand her, she had looked at him as if she did not know him, for he was greatly changed in the form of a mighty Deva, and the men restraining her had ignored him. He had found himself incapable of moving to stop them as they dragged her to the sacrificial furnace in the ground before the fake Wall, held back by his own god's treacherous power. But he had both seen and heard her final moments of terror.
After that, the memory of her screams had been the song of battle in his heart, and it had spurred him on to try to save her soul. For that he would need to pull her free from the Wall of the Faithless…and when Myrkul had denied him that hope, he had uncovered the lost Sword of Gith, and mustered an army of the damned and the vengeful from across the Planes.
"He fought for love, and to protect the souls of those he cared for. He acted without thought for the cost to himself, and ultimately he lost all sense of what was possible, and what was right – if a worshipper of Myrkul can ever be expected to know right from wrong."
A weary voice addressed Isaviel, and she became joltingly aware that she was now back in her own body, only her surroundings were not those of the broken city and the crystal heart. Nor were her friends anywhere to be seen. Spinning around in confusion, the Moon Elf saw that she stood within a vast library, cold and lightless, with several dizzying floors tiered above her. A short distance away, by a broad table stacked with scrolls and inkwells, waited a robed Elf. His arms were folded across his chest, and he was watching her with a sad smile.
"Where am I?" Isaviel demanded, approaching him cautiously, balling her hands into nervous fists when she reached reflexively for her weapons and found that she had none. Once again she was dressed simply in those monk robes with which she had faced Akachi earlier in the day.
"Though the cold, musty air might deceive you, we are…nowhere, one might say," the Elf replied airily, "I am a memory, a soul who clings to life with the aid of the heart into which you are gazing, the heart of the dragon Nolalothcaragasint. And I recognise the soul you carry, the Spirit-Eater Akachi, for my father lived through those days, and such a horror as a battle for the souls of the damned does not go unnoticed. Akachi terrorized the Rashemi and the Thayans for decades, before the spirits of forests and streams and all the earth rose up in Rashemen and slew him, dissipating his soul into his offspring, not least to your trapped father. And now at last the circle has come around, and you stand before me, his last living descendant. But he watches through your eyes, and you have seen his memories. Can you hate one who has suffered so much? Can you rather feel sympathy, if not empathy, for one who marched on the City of Judgement to save the soul of his beloved, and right the wrongs of all eternity?"
Isaviel eyed the Elf before her more cautiously still as he spoke. She was here to learn of a way to kill the King of Shadows, and yet this…ghost…spoke only of her millennia-dead grandfather.
"And you ask me these questions because…?" the Moon Elf prompted impatiently, and her ghostly addressor rolled his eyes.
"So unwilling to listen, to contemplate, or to learn. The living are slow to understand and all too quick to die."
"The one who you now call 'The King of Shadows' was not always as you have come to know him," a deep voiced interrupted now.
Isaviel turned abruptly to see a thickly bearded dwarf watching her with eyes that glinted blackly in the faintest hint of distant light. Dressed in a belted doublet, with a fur-lined side-cloak across his shoulders and gilded bracers around his forearms, he was evidently an important member of the city…once. Now his colourless form betrayed his true existence: that of a soul anchored to Faerûn by a dragon's heart.
"Then what was he?" the Moon Elf asked, wishing the chill pervading her being ever more strongly would desist at least long enough for her to send a more convincing glare his way. How was one meant to deal with the infuriatingly cryptic souls of the dead?
"He was my brother," another voice put in, and Isaviel turned again to see a tall, powerfully built man standing by her side, a broadsword strapped to his back. He looked pleasant enough, though the woman beside him was glowering at Isaviel, tears staining her ice-white cheeks.
"He was a man who abandoned his life for the sake of his people," the Dwarf corrected, though he inclined his head to the young warrior who had just spoken. His eyes lingered momentarily on the crying woman, "When Illefarn was in dire need, and our archwizard told him of the hope he had of creating a guardian for our city, he offered himself up to take on that much-needed role. He gave up his family, and his love, to protect his people."
"He suffered greatly at first," the young woman put in now, her voice shaking – whether from misery or anger, Isaviel could not tell, "Daily he became more disconnected from reality; the need to 'protect' our city was so great. Until eventually he could no longer remember my name, nor that of anyone he had once known."
"And when the Weave which had transformed him failed…he turned to other means," the Elf by the table added, and he was smiling with anything but amusement when Isaviel turned to look at him, "He looked to the dark twin of the realm of magic, to the Shadow Weave. Soon the evil essence of that power destroyed the last vestiges of the person he had been. Though his soul lingered, trapped on Faerûn, his strength came from other realms. He was suspended across the Planes, dwelling nowhere, a traveller wherever he went. All he knew was the need to protect Illefarn…at any cost. And he perceived threat in every corner of our world and beyond."
"So you called on the dragon to kill him," Isaviel surmised, and the Elf nodded, "But he failed."
"Yes. But he had enemies elsewhere, and when the Guardian came against the Githyanki, their silver swords cut him free of his power source…for a time. It would take a mightier sword than those which they possessed to destroy him forever."
"The Sword of Gith," Isaviel nodded, "Which my mother uncovered to her cost…and Ammon Jerro broke in battle against the King of Shadows at West Harbour. It seems to have been no more effective than any of the other silver swords."
"The warlock did not know of the Ritual of Purification. He came to us with arrogance and violence. One such as him should not be allowed to wield such power, not even against our ruined Guardian," the young woman spat bitterly.
"Nor did he truly know how to wield the sword," the well-dressed Dwarf explained, "The last creature to understand its real power was your grandfather, Akachi the Betrayer, once of Mulsantir. The sword recognises his soul in you, as it also recognises your descent from him. In your heart you know how to control it, and how to bring it together under your will. It may never truly be whole again, but it will be as one in your grasp. Pierce the heart of the Guardian of Illefarn once the Ritual of Purification is complete and you will at last kill him."
"Give him the rest he so deserves, for his millennia of misguided service," the young woman begged, taking a step forward, reaching her hands out imploringly, "He was my love once, and he wanted only the best for his homeland. Give him peace…as you have vowed to bring it to us and the dragon who keeps us here."
"And the sword? How do I make it whole again?" Isaviel demanded as the vision before her began to blur, spinning about herself to look each of the dissipating souls in the eyes, "You never told me how to reforge it."
"Your will," the Elf reminded at last, "That is all you need. The sword will listen to your command. Look into the memories of the ancestor you so bragged about. Gith's mighty sword will do the rest."
When Isaviel once more found herself in the real world, wrapped in furs with her weapons comfortingly on her belt, her legs were aching from long hours of standing, staring into the depths of the dragon's heart. The sun was rising over the mountaintops, setting the city to shimmering fragilely in tenuous winter light, the sky a startlingly clear, pale blue. Her friends were slumped around the atrium in which she stood; Sand had fallen asleep propped against a pillar, while Grobnar had curled up on the ground and was snoring softly with his golem standing sentinel by his side. Bishop looked up sharply when Isaviel stepped back from the heart with a gasp, and Zhjaeve turned from her thoughtful stance by the archway leading to the balcony. Casavir eventually jolted upright from his seat against a crumbling window frame when Isaviel poured the silver shards with a loud clatter onto the ground. The paladin was bleary eyed, and had evidently been dozing.
"Care to tell us what you saw, Captain?" Bishop inquired distrustfully as Isaviel continued to ignore her companions, all of whom were stirring now, looking at her with varying degrees of befuddlement, "Might be that your promise to the dragon will bring on more than you bargained for." Once again the ranger gestured over at the far ridge of mountains, where dragons had been crawling all night.
"Then you had best be prepared," the Moon Elf told them all distantly, "I have to do this." And the weight of that reality, the realisation that she had made a vow which she must adhere to, weighed more heavily than the guilt of the all the horror that followed.
"Isaviel," Bishop growled when she did not look around at him, as if he sensed exactly what it was that she intended, seeing her take up the great sword hilt in both hands, and how the shards glittered at her feet.
With a sigh, the Moon Elf shook her head, closing her eyes, feeling the hum of the shards at her feet. She imagined them moving to her will, rising in to the air and reforming the blade, summoning the memory that was Akachi's of holding the sword aloft, a beacon in a grey world.
"Run," she whispered, and when her friends hesitated she opened her eyes, hardly surprised to see the shimmering blade arcing up before her eyes, its three red jewels winking in the light like baleful eyes, "Run. Now."
She barely waited for them to begin scrambling back down the curving walkway by which they had ascended before she plunged the blade of the reforged Sword of Gith into the suspended heart of Nolaloth. The mighty roars of serpentine rage that followed were warning enough.