A years-old habit took over as Adahni threw the latch, expecting the great portcullis separating the Keep from the farmlands outside to rattle shut as it had until…

Until she was betrayed.

Oh yeah, she thought, That's how that ended. Or started. Or both. She shuddered at the memory of the steel in her back, the garrotte around her throat. She looked up at the sky and down the road, but unlike the real Keep, where you could see down to the ocean and glimpse a gathering storm hours before it arrived, there was nothing but the flat gray of the Fugue Plane. Is this my dream? She tried, as she had with the Slumbering Coven, to alter it, to conjure the deep blue of the sky in Neverwinter, to conjure a view down to the boats dotting the coast and the clouds gathering off to the east. But, no, just that muted gray, the land falling off into obscurity, showing nothing beyond those dank, dark walls.

This isn't mine. He's taken it. She gagged, the spirit within her stirring uncomfortably. I can't see the ocean, because he's never seen the ocean.

"Akachi!" she bellowed, "Show yourself!"

I know what you're going to do, you coward, the voice from within her hissed, You're going to save yourself.

"You're damned right I am!" she shouted out loud, her voice echoing around the vast, empty courtyard, "Either I walk out of this, or neither of us do."

A great crack issued from the very ground below her feet. She stumbled, and then was thrown flat on her back, stunned a moment as her head hit the flagstones. When her vision cleared, he was on top of her, twitching, his head rolling on his shoulders, moving faster than her eyes could compute, his hands tight around her throat. She writhed and struggled, but her breath was failing and it was only a matter of time until she was no longer the one in charge. The already dark of the Fugue Plane grew darker as the shadows lurking at the corner of her vision began to close in front of her.

"Stay still, you tweaky bastard!" a familiar voice growled, though it sounded far away, like a child at the bottom of a well. Closer, though, was the crack of steel on bone as the pressure eased from around her neck and she drew in a breath of stale, but satisfying air.

"Teach you to sneak up on a woman from her own mind," another voice issued, and another thwack.

"Get up then, lass."

Adahni shook her head, trying to clear her vision, but before she could realize what was happening a pair of broad, gauntleted hands lifted her clear to her feet.

"Khelgar?" she said, recognizing her old companion from his silhouette alone, "And that means… you're Helvynn."

"You didn't think I'd let you wander into the land of the dead and only greet that damned paladin, did you?" the dwarf chuckled. Against the muddy colors of the plane, his beard blazed redder than it had in life, and his eyes sparkled.

"Where'd he go?" she looked around, puzzled. She gazed around and saw that Helvynn, that fierce shieldmaiden, had joined her, her armor blazing like the sun. There was no white in her yellow hair now, and the scar that had wound its way down the side of her face in life was gone.

"Fast little shite," Helvynn commented said, glancing down at her boot, which was on what appeared to be nothing more than a puddle of darkness. Though, as Addie watched, it began to solidify, slowly, before her eyes. There looked to be some semblance of an arm, now. Then a torso. It was as though the darkness was being slowly dissipated by those around it, coming more into focus, more into being.

"So you two, you're in the same place?"

"You doubted it?" Khelgar said, another clang issuing as he clapped his iron-gloved hand over Helvynn's iron-clad shoulders.

"I suppose not, but this is honestly the most comforting thing I've learned today," she said, "Wait… are you together because you are, or are you just my mind telling me something I want to hear?"

The dwarves looked at each other, and each shrugged. "Does it matter?"

"The others I met, I suppose I sought forgiveness from them."

"Did you?" Helvynn asked, "Or did you seek to forgive yourself?"

"See I didn't actually know you well enough to know if that's something you'd say, or something I'd think you'd say, or something you think I think you'd say," Adahni sighed.

"Lass," Khelgar sighed, "There's no way for me to answer this that's going to satisfy you. If I'm here, I'm here. If I'm not here, I'm off somewhere in the springtime. And if I am the one your mind summoned to be your champion, in a moment of need, then that is forgiveness enough."

"Like that! That is not something the Khelgar I knew would say! That's something I would say - maybe I wouldn't entirely mean it, but I might say it. Or maybe it is something Khelgar would say if he finally got that monk training he wanted… you wanted."

"All's I know," said Helvynn, "Is that the whispers on the wind said that a great battle was happening, and your name was mentioned, and that was enough to summon us."

"Do you have a stake in it?" Adahni asked, "I mean… you're dead, and… for the moment, I'm not. I feel like you ought to have a say in what I…"

The two dwarf shades began laughing uproariously, "She thinks we get a say!"

"Well that's rich as Lord Nasher's right testicle," Helvynn giggled, "You're off to fight a god, are you?"

"And why's that so funny?" Adahni countered, "Kelemvor and Cyric before him were but mortals."

"She has a point," Khelgar conceded, "She's always been an absolute lunatic."

"Now that… that is something Khelgar would say."

"And him? What do we do with him?" Helvynn asked, and she saw that, beneath the shieldmaiden's boot, the dark had finished coalescing, into the shape of a man. And yet, he was not complete.

"Do you not remember your face, Akachi?" she asked, pitching her voice low and gentle. Would this work on something such as him, "Do you know why I'm here?"

The void paused at the mention of its name.

"Do you remember Nefris? Do your remember Araman? They remember you," she said, pouring all the emptiness within her into her words. She took the mask off of her own face, stooped, and placed it over where she imagined his face ought to be.

The darkness changed, as though clouds moved rapidly across the sun away from the sun. Birds began to chirp, and Adahni felt something within herself shift and relax. She turned and looked down the road and could see, right where it belonged, the ocean. He wasn't in control anymore. She looked back at her friends, at Akachi, and instead of the void, a young man, slightly built and black of hair, lay. He took the mask from his face and looked at it, then looked at her.

"How'd you do that?" Helvynn asked, raising her eyebrows and starting back. This gave him the opportunity to rise, to shake himself off, and look around him.

"I'm… not entirely sure."

"Is it over?" Akachi asked, his voice hoarse.

"I think it is," Adahni replied.

"How long has it been?"

"I don't think it matters anymore," she said.

"Am I dead?"

"Yes," she said.

"What is this place? I know it… I think I dreamed I was here. I've had such dreams… but now… I think it's time for me to go."

"I think you're right."

"Is it springtime?" Akachi asked, looking all around him, blinking in the sunlight.

"It's always springtime," Khelgar said, "Come on, I'll show you the road."

"I think I'd like that," he said.

"Farewell, lass," the dwarf said.

"We'll see you again," Helvynn added, "But not too soon, you hear?"

"Not too soon," Addie agreed.

The three of them walked down the cobblestones through the great portcullis, and disappeared into the hills. That was all well and good, because the great castle had begun to melt around them, like a loaf of sugar in the rain. Adahni was beginning to wake up.

She startled awake, seeing again the bleak landscape outside the City of Judgment. Gann, Kaelynn, and Okku stood around her, but their backs were to her, as though they had been guarding her sleeping form. When she rose, she learned why. Standing before her, flanked by two doomguards, was a man, cloaked and cowled in a robe of gray, and on his face a golden mask, its eyes closed. And so, she could not see what expression he wore when he began to speak.

"You have restored his soul... done what gods thought beyond their power."

"Oh shit," Adahni said, "I mean… sorry… probably shouldn't curse in front of a god. Fuck. I cursed in front of a god."

"Akachi has gone to his judgment - to the fate that should have been his, had Myrkul not intervened. Not to lie within the Wall, but to find his rest," Kelemvor, for it was he, continued, "His torment is ended, and as for Myrkul... the dark god's soul will fade, and pass into oblivion, as he deserves."

"So… just like that, it's done, it's over?" she asked, narrowing her eyes, not entirely trusting him.

"Your part in it? Yes," said the god of the dead, "The chaos you sowed in my city will win you few friends among the gods. Deities of order will case their eyes upon you, as a symbol of all they oppose."

"I've never been popular with authority figures," she shrugged.

"I have no power to pass judgment on you. As you see, you are alive. You are not under my jurisdiction. And I see in your Crusade the hand of a dead god, and the desperation of a forsaken soul, trying to save the one she loved. The good you have done here redeems much."

"So you understand," Adahni said, nearly blown over by this realization, "You understand why I did what I did?"

"I do," he replied.

"So you understood what Nefris did, you must understand that I did not do it only for her. You still have something I need." Her eyes slid to the Wall before which they stood. That spot that she had been in stood empty, but still frozen, eyes open and unspeaking, Bishop remained.

Adahni thought she saw a flicker of surprise cross the god's masked features. She had said something he did not anticipate.

"Him," she said, "I need that soul right there. As you just said, I do not fall under your purview, as I am not dead, but neither is he. I need him back."

"And should I simply take your word, you who deal in half truths and honeyed words?" he asked. It was an insult, but she imagined he didn't intend it as such. He was, after all, simply stating facts, "That one does belong to me by rights, he without a god, without a path."

"But he's not dead," Adahni protested, "Don't you see? He's a part of this. They used him. They did to me what Myrkul did to Nefris. What drove her mad."

The god paused, "He has led a life of wickedness."

"He's twenty-two years old, for fuck's sake. He might have seventy, even eighty years, to redeem himself," she protested. She got the distinct sense that the god of the dead had not planned for this scenario. She was suddenly, however, very glad that her clever ruse with Safiya had gone the way it had. Her words, usually her sharpest weapons, were getting her exactly nowhere.

The masked head shook slowly from side to side, "Our business here is done," the masked god concluded, "You cannot remain here."

"Ah, but that's where you're wrong," Adahni said, no longer concerned with decorum.

"Do you presume to correct the God of the Dead?" Kelemvor asked. Behind his mask, she suspected whatever he had as a face was smirking.

"I do," she said, "Kelemvor Lyonsbane of… what was it, Waterdeep? You may be a god now, but once you were a man. Handsome one, if the books are to be believed. Wouldn't know now, what with the whole… " she gestured vaguely at his mask, "But, my point is, you were a man who is now a god."

The god paused, she had evidently given him something to think about.

"You were once a man," she repeated, "And, currently, I am a woman, which is probably a slightly superior sort of being, all things considered. The route to godhood may be circuitous, but I think I would make quite a goddess of the dead. I have some plans for this place, once it's under new management."

"You know not of what you speak," Kelemvor replied, though she could tell he had unsettled him.

"Don't I? You think I didn't do my homework? You see, I took the liberty of going through the libraries of this city on my way here. I am now in the possession of two particular books. The Tome of Ka'Tai, I believe one of them is called. The other, the Tome of the Dolorous Sage," Adahni said.

"How do I know you are not a liar?"

"I am a liar," Adahni said, "But I'm not lying about this. Ask any of your little henchmen, they will have seen me go through the libraries."

"She's telling the truth," a doomguide with great curling sheep's horns said, "I saw her myself."

"So a bargain," she said, "Give me what I want and I will go from this place and never think on them again, and I will not return until it's too late for me to do anything about it."

"Or what?"

She put her hand over her belly, "This child will need me for twenty or more years, especially if she doesn't have a father. But after that time… once I am satisfied that my work on the material plane is done, I will come back for you."

"Are you threatening me?"

"I am warning you," she replied, "You saw what I did. You said it yourself. I sowed chaos in the City of Judgment, even just as I am, right now. And that was without even the intention of bringing you down. That is what I did with an army raised in three months. Imagine what I could do with thirty years."

Kelemvor paused. It was a small risk. The route to godhood was, indeed, circuitous and grueling - but was it worth a single soul? Myrkul had subjected the City of Judgment to not one, but two assaults on the City of Judgment because of his obsession with Akachi. A third crusade, spurred on by yet another old woman driven mad with grief, might succeed. To part with a soul from his wall - one that would most likely return to it one day - suddenly did not seem so steep a price.

"Very well," the god of the dead said, "I am not an unfeeling god. I will grant you this small mercy. But know that one day, he will die, and he will again be a part of my wall if he does not change his ways."

"That is entirely up to him," Adahni said. She took an empty soul casing out of her pack and handed it to the god. Kelemvor approached the wall, saw the twisted face and ragged mouth of Kyrwan Bishop. He put one gloved hand to his forehead, and the area around his shape began to glow. The light flowed from the wall, and the orb began to glow dully with a murky green. The other bodies slowly oozed in to fill the space, and the bard took her prize.

"It is not an ordinary thing, to be able to bargain with the God of Death," Kelemvor said.

"I am not an ordinary woman," Adahni said.

"And the tomes?" Kelemvor asked.

"Collateral," Adahni said, "The tomes are in a safe place. There are only two who know where. And there they shall stay, and so long as you let this go, I will as well. And now," she sighed, "Now our business here is done."

"Beware hubris," Kelemvor called out to her retreating back, for she had found where Safiya had left her a conveniently placed portal, "You may go through this life with deceit and lies, but they will only lead to your doom. I hope you use this time I have given you to reconsider your path. I will see you again."

"This extra time I have earned," she corrected him, "And yes, I suppose I shall see you again."

She turned to leave through the portal, but paused a second and said, without looking back, "If another has not taken your place."