Though the barrow was quite dark, Adahni could tell that they were walking up hill. Ever the scholar, she paused several times to examine the runes along the wall. Safiya tugged her away from them several times, warning her that she would wake the spirits up. Adahni was not impressed by this, and continued to examine them. They looked oddly familiar, though they were not Common or Elvish, or any of their linguistic ancestors. Despite the strange feeling of recognition she got when she looked at them, she could not make heads or tails of their meaning.

Along the way, Safiya raided the vaults on either side of the wall. There she found a serviceable leather jerkin and breeches that fit if Adahni left the buttons undone. The ancient Imaskar, apparently, were quite a bit smaller than Addie. The cotton shirt she wore under the jerkin covered up that her fly was open, and she supposed that things could be worse. They journeyed uphill for about an hour by Addie's count, until Safiya paused a moment and disappeared around a corner that Adahni didn't even see. She returned bearing a rapier, ancient, but still glowing with some kind of ancient enchantment. Adahni took it from her and examined it.

"This isn't as old as the barrow," she said, drawing on the seemingly endless store of random and often useless knowledge that she had gleaned from doing naught but reading as a child, "This is a newer weapon, less than a hundred years old. The enchantment seems to be against spirits."

"That's likely a good thing," the red wizard replied, "This place is replete with them."

"Is it?" Adahni asked. She felt something turn inside her, and unfamiliar ache, a hunger, and she was not entirely sure for what.

"Yes, I can hear them," Safiya said, "All the souls that were buried here, forgotten long ago…"

"Somehow I don't think that's what you're talking about," Adahni said, "Ghosts I can deal with. Ghosts have kept me company on some lonely nights."

"No, it's not," Safiya admitted, "The land in Rashemen is full of spirits. Here, we are at a thin place in the walls between the planes, and they walk freely among us."

"Ah, yes," Adahni said, looking forward to where it looked as though the walls of the cavern had detached themselves, molded themselves into a vaguely hominid form, and were moving towards them at an alarming rate, "Earth elementals."

Safiya turned, "You are correct," she said. She let loose a glowing spurt of magic which flew through the air and wound itself around the elementals' legs, binding them where they stood. Adahni had the opportunity to put her new blade to the test, and she did so. Though the elementals appeared to be of solid rock, they were nothing but the remaining essence of a spirit long dead, animating piles of dirt and stone. The enchantment on her blade disrupted the cohesiveness of this spirit, and trapped, they could do nothing as she rent them stone from stone until they collapsed into piles on the ground.

"You've some skill with a blade," Safiya said, smiling a bit.

"Pirate," Adahni replied, by way of explanation, "You suppose there are more of these where these two funloving scamps came from?"

"I can guarantee it."

"Oh goody, this is going to be a long night. Day. Something."

"It's daytime," Safiya said.

"Helpful, down here," Adahni replied sarcastically, setting off up the tunnel. She felt a gust of cold air on her face, and was hopeful that perhaps the surface was near, "Where are you taking me, once we get out of this place?"

"Mulsantir," Safiya said, "It's a port city. There, we will speak with Lienna. She'll know what to do."

"Who is Lienna?" asked Adahni, "Another red wizard?"

"No," Safiya replied, "At least, I don't think so. She's a friend of my mother's."

"No red wizard but a friend of red wizards," Adahni said, "I suppose that should be comforting?"

"Have I given you a reason to fear me, Adahni Farishta?" Safiya asked.

"If I were only suspicious of those that had given me a reason to be, I'd have died on a sword a long, long time ago," she said, "And call me Addie."

"Very well, Addie," Safiya said.

"Well," Adahni sighed, "We're stuck together, for the time being at least. Tell me about the port of Mulsantir. Do many boats dock there?"

"A few," Safiya said, "A few seafaring vessels make the trip up the Lapendrar river, though Thay, to tried along the lakefront. It's a dangerous trek, though, more than a few have attempted and not made it."

"How long a journey is it?"

"Depends on the weather, Safiya replied. They had come a long way by now, and the air grew sweeter as they went. Adahni dared to let the hope kindle in her breast, "I've heard of it taking a month or more."

"A month or more," Adahni sighed, "And a navigator that doesn't quite know what he's doing…"

"What are you talking about?"

"My ship, the Dance of the Damned," she said, "We had intended on plying our trade in Lake Mulsantir. There was a storm off of Escalant, that's how I wound up…"

"Here?" Safiya asked, "That must have been some storm."

"No," she said, "I was knocked overboard, I swam for shore, I passed out somewhere at the mouth of the Lapendrar and… here I am. I don't know what happened between the storm and now, and I sure as hells have no idea how I wound up in here, or who's been digging about in my chest." She opened her jerkin and let Safiya see where the raw knife wounds zigzagged between her breast and up to her collar bones.

"Odd," Safiya said, "It looks like they were looking for something."

"Oh, I know what they were looking for," Adahni said, "I don't have it any more. I got rid of it, ages ago. So you can tell this Lienna that when you find her. Me, I'll be looking for passage down river."

"You can't!" Safiya exclaimed, "You can't just go like that."

"Look," Adahni said, "Whoever was looking for me, was looking for something I no longer have, something I left halfway across Faerun and for very good reason. I'm not who they think I am, not any more. Now I don't know if you're lying to me, or if you actually are as clueless as they come, but whatever game your little friends are playing, I'm not interested."

Safiya paused, and sighed, "Very well, Adahni Farishta. Let's concentrate on getting out of this barrow, and then I can try to negotiate with you to speak with Lienna, before you return to your pirating ways."

They seemed to be walking in circles now, every so often stumbling onto a barrow, which Adahni unceremoniously looted. She found a serviceable bag to carry things in, always useful for a long journey, and only had to fight off a few spirits. Telthors, Safiya called them, though Adahni was not entirely sure of the significance of that name. Eventually they found themselves in a large chamber, well populated by these telthors – wolves, badgers, and other woodland creatures in ghostly silhouette. These spirits seemed placid, they did not attack. One did, however, speak, which startled Adahni something awful. She had not been in a position to have to speak to an animal who answered back in a very, very long time.

"Red wizard!" it growled, in the voice that one would imagine a wolf would speak in, "I smelled you a mile off. You woke us from our slumber. And who is this one you have with you? A stranger in this land."

At this point, Adahni's stomach chose to growl loudly, and the rather embarrassing noise echoed around the cavern.

"Yes, a stranger indeed," she said, "We're trying to find a way out. Let us pass and you'll hear no more from us. Well, from me, anyway. I certainly have no interest in coming back here in this life or the next."

"You came from the Cave of Runes," the wolf spirit said, "We were told there was a seeping poison there, a mouth which swallows memories and names. Anything that emerges from the cave must be sent back there, living or dead. Our god commands it."

"Your god," sighed Adahni, "Of course, someone's god always has to be involved."

"Okku commands it."

Okku. That name struck a bell. A bear god of Rashemi invention. Adahni herself had never seen or spoken to a god, and was hoping to put off that eventuality until she was well into her nineties and ready for her end. But this was Rashemen, where gods and spirits walked the surface of Faerun. Indeed, perhaps it was unavoidable. Her stomach turned again, lurching as though it were throwing itself against her ribcage. She felt hungry. Of course you're hungry, foolish girl, you didn't eat except for dinner before the storm, and lords know how long you've been out before you woke up in this godsforsaken place. She wanted bread, large quantities of it, spread with the soft cheese of the sort that Neverese shepherds were known for making. You don't even like that cheese, Addie, what is wrong with you? She thought on it longer, all of a sudden unable to keep her mind on anything but the raging of her empty insides.

What Adahni saw then was a black hole open in front of her, and the hole was a mouth, and the mouth swallowed the wolf whole, and then the smaller wolves, and the badgers, and the foxes, until the cavern was empty. She felt herself standing there in a daze, unsure of what was going on, but watching the disembodied mouth suck out the essences of all the spirits in the room. Oddly enough, she felt satiated as ghostly form after ghostly form disappeared into the hole. Having eaten all that was edible in the room, the hold snapped shut, and the force of it sent her sprawling on her back.

What Safiya saw was the pirate girl jumping on the spirit wolf, wrestling him to the ground, biting a hole in his neck and sucking the very lifeblood out of him, and then move on to the other creatures who were standing there too terrified to do anything about it. Then, full to the brim, she stopped, looked at Safiya without seeing her, and collapsed on the floor as the bodies of the spirits she had eaten faded into nothingness around her.

She was in Luskan, sweeping the floor at the Cuckoo's Nest bar where she used to work. She was wearing one of Kyla's dresses, with a black rose pinned at her bosom, the symbol that marked her as a prostitute, available for the evening's pleasure if the price was right. The floor was covered in a layer of fine dust that she could not get off no matter how hard she scraped with the willow broom. She swept furiously, trying to get the floorboards clean, but try as she might, the floor just got dirtier and dirtier and dirtier.

"Have an ale," commanded Casavir. He was standing in the corner, playing chess with himself on a board the hovered in the air before him. He handed her a blue piglet, which squealed in her arms.

"That's not an ale," she protested.

"Have a piglet," he said, and handed her a tankard full of ale. She put the piglet on the ground and it began rushing around, eating up the piles of dust that she had made.

She got a terrible feeling in her gut then. She wasn't supposed to be with Casavir. Casavir was dead. He'd died in her arms. If she were with Casavir, it meant she was dead too. Or dreaming.

Or dreaming. She sighed in relief, and looked about. The bar room in her dreams was populated with people she knew. Of course they were people she knew, it was her dream, she wouldn't be able to people it with faces she had never seen. She walked around the room, examining them. Yes, there was Pitney Lannon from West Harbor. Lysinda and Jothka, two of the whores she used to work with. And there was Fray Trovo, and Luskan archer that had served under her at Crossroad Keep. Yes, all familiar. It was a dream. This was not the next life. Thank the gods.

But then she saw someone that she had never seen before. A very odd looking man with a bluish cast to his skin was standing in the corner. Unlike everyone else in the room, he was watching her, a bemused expression on his face. His hair, which fell below his shoulders, had a bluish tint as well, and the eyes that watched her were nearly purple. I certainly would have remembered seeing him, she thought to herself. She walked towards him, intending to have a word and inquire what particular part of her subconscious he represented. She wouldn't put it past herself to conjure a handsome stranger, though why he was blue, she was not sure. When he saw her approaching him, he turned and left the bar room. She left too, intending to following him to the streets of Luskan that no doubt her mind would have laid out outside of the Cuckoo's Nest. Instead, there was nothingness, only empty space. Before her rose the same black hole she had seen as she had devoured the spirits, only this time it was facing her. It opened, wider, and wider, and all of a sudden, snapped shut.

She awoke, gasping, in a cold sweat.

"Adahni!" Safiya cried, "Are you all right?"

She shook her head and looked around, no longer in Luskan, but back in the barrow. She looked up, and belched loudly.

"Did I… Was that me?" she asked.

"You… erm… you ate the spirits."

"I what?"

"You went systematically around the room, broke their necks, and sucked something out of them. You ate them," Safiya said.

"Now you're making absolutely no sense," Adahni said, "You're saying I'm the one with the big disembodied mouth?"

"If what the wolf said before you so unceremoniously dispatched of him is true, then Okku sleeps above here. We should run into him on the way out, and perhaps he will know what it is that just happened."

"This is just getting ridiculous," Adahni grumbled. She still sort of wanted that soft cheese on bread, but now that her hunger pangs had quieted she was having a better time putting it out of her mind. Onward and upward they went, hoping that the bear god might say something useful.