What surprised her about herself was that she wasn't even angry, seeing his face here in this dark place. If the past few years had taught her nothing else, they did teach her that nobody, not even the dead, have disappeared forever. Even if they only lived as part of your dream, they were eternal. This one, though, this seemed to be the real thing. Of course he'd wind up here, he'd bought into the Cult of Cyric hook line and sinker. Oh, some assassins did it for the sweet black cloaks, some for the pure sadistic pleasure of getting paid to kill, but not Dayven Elhandrien. Perhaps he'd gone in because he thought he'd look good in black, but the Mad God got his claws into him good. And now here he was, back to his old self, his healthy self, the person he would have been without the drugs and the cult, but bound forever to the tomb of his deceased master.

"So he's not joking?" Kaelyn said, "He hasn't mistaken you for someone else? Or a former spirit eater?"

She shook her head, not taking her eyes off him. How did he look so pure? "How many years was it, love? Eight? Eight years. A few of them were good, I think. So, Dayven, was it worth it? All the blood you spilled? All the spirits you twisted and bent, is the eternal rest you sought so fervently everything you dreamed of and more?"

"To be quite honest," he said, scratching behind one ear, "Not really. You're alive, though. You've aged some, but not a lot. Tell me, how long have I been dead? How long since that bastard Bishop put an arrow in my back?"

"You mean while you were trying to put a knife in mine?"

"Oh yeah, I'd forgotten that bit."

"Right after the night when you tried to gut me while I stayed in Solace Glade?"

"I did do that, didn't I."

"Little more than a year after you took a contract out to break my neck and cut my heart from my body?"

"Hey now, I didn't know it was going to be you… all right fine, I'm not going to quarrel with the living. Yes. I did do that."

"I was being sarcastic when I said that death suits you, but now I see that it's true," she said, "I remember you like this, sometime, a long time ago. The man I remember would never have… he'd have tried knocking me to ground by now."

"Funny thing about not living in a body constantly in pain," he said, "I was freed in some ways. Bound in others. But tell me, how long has it been?"

"Nearly three years," said Adahni, satisfied with the acknowledgment.

"Three years… only three years?"

"Not that it really matters to you does it," she said, "This is kind of it for you, isn't it?"

"I thought… at least a hundred years would have passed since I saw the son of a bitch Bishop get carried through here gnollback. But no, here you are, alive, hair black as ever. You've gained a bit of weight though… but really? Three years?"

"He got carried through here?" asked Adahni, "How long ago?"

"I think we've already established that he doesn't have a very good grasp on time," Gann interceded.

"What's it to you anyway?" asked Dayven, ignoring the hagspawn.

"We three just can't seem to stay away from each other," she said, shrugging, "I had hoped the last time would have been the last… you having died and all."

Dayven's expression was inscrutable. It was such a strange thing, looking him full in the face after so long his face had been etched in her memory as the contorted visage of a monster, a half man twisted and bent by madness and narcotics. And here he was, looking as though he'd been carved from marble. "I wish it had been the last time too," he said, "Tell me, how close are we to the end of all things? I'm tired of it here. It's not what I expected."

"More than you bargained for," she remarked, "Ain't that the way of things. So, are you going to let us pass, or do I have to fight you? How do I even fight you? You're already dead."

"No, you may pass. We're here for decoration, don't tell the dead Gods I said that of course," he said, "Myrkul is waiting for you, I heard it from his guards. I didn't know it was going to be you, though. I never know when it's going to be you…. You just pop up like a mushroom out of wet ground." He looked down at her, a flicker of pain passing over his features.

"So you regret it," she said.

"That implies I could do something differently if I went back," he said, "I can't, though, no back, only forward. I can look forward to oblivion, but if that's what three years is like, I imagine the centuries will eventually torture me back into insanity…"

"If I'm understanding you correctly, you just said you long for oblivion? To no longer exist?" Adahni asked. The presence within her stirred, sensing her thought.

You wouldn't, Gann smirked at her in her head, Oh, this is delicious.

"I would love nothing more," the shade replied somberly.

"If I had the power to grant you this small mercy?" she asked, "Would you ask it of me?"

"You always were a prankster, Addie," he said, "You and I both know you are not a God. You have no power over my soul. I know I tormented you in life, but I am punished for that, you don't need to torment me in death."

"If I did, would you ask it?"

"Yes, yes I would. I tire of this, I thought it would be a welcome distraction, but you only serve to remind me of what I did to land myself in this place. Please, just go on about your business."

The curse was now a thunderous roar in her chest, angry that she had thought of sating the hunger and now she was standing around talking about it. Just do it, it screamed in her head.

"You're sure you want it?" she asked, "I've managed to acquire a curse. The very reason I'm here to speak with Myrkul."

"I thought it only a legend, something blustery doomguards of Myrkul talk about to seem more terrible they are," he said. "You would… consume me? End this?" He looked at her, his green eyes glassy, and for the first time, her perceived the difference behind her eyes, saw through them into the stirring darkness within. He nodded, and closed his eyes, "I have no desire to be twisted into madness yet again as I was in life," he said, "Thank you."

This glimpse of what he might have been pained her something awful, but she was happy enough to both rid herself of him for good while quieting the burning hunger. She went out of her body, and when she did, for the first time she saw what must have been the reality of the place. Rather than the vaults and mausoleums than she'd been seeing or the swampy lowland that Gann perceived. It was more terrible than all that. The sky was dark, but not black, like it was closer to dawn than midnight, but would never get there. The spires she had first seen were back, but they were not towers, but the massive ribcage of a dead god. They were walking where his spine would have been, and she realized with a bit of revulsion what the rocks she had been picking over on the ground must have been. Up at the top of a hill, she saw the skull and knew that that is where she must travel.

She awoke to a feathery slap in the face as Kaelyn smacked her with the underside of one wing. She sat up and sneezed twice. Before her the cloak of the servants of Cyric lay, a black puddle on the black stones. "Gods I hope that's the last I see of him. And don't do that weird wing thing again, Kaelyn, I think I might be allergic to you," she said. Even now back in her body, once she'd seen the real Boneyard, she could not unsee it, even with her paltry eyes and brain. The presence within her felt sated, satisfied with the meal. She smirked, feeling exhilarated. The way up the hill to the massive skull no longer felt impossible.

"What was that about?" asked Safi's voice. She had appeared behind Okku, "Was that really him?

"What are you doing here?" asked Adahni, "I thought you were taking care of Djafi. Why'd you follow us here?"

"I just… had to," the red wizard said.

Do you trust her? Gann asked in her head.

Absolutely not, she replied, No way she just decided to come here for no reason. Those voices in her head are chattering away aren't they. I think we're quite close to discovering the answer to this silly little mystery.

"What about Djafi?" she asked.

"He told me to follow you. He'll be all right."

There's no way to get rid of her without drawing suspicion that we're on to her, Gann thought at her. Adahni nodded absently, hoping he'd notice. It seemed none of their companions had managed to figure out quite yet that they were communicating without words. They all just probably assumed they were secretly sleeping together or something.

Up and up the hill they trudged. They came to the crest of the hill, where the great skull, as tall as an ancient oak, lolled on the ground. It was still as death, but a steady blue light issued from its cavernous depths.

"Ah, what is this? Are you a dream? A fantasy? A recollection spawned of my own dead mind?" The skull did not move, as one might expect when a creature was talking, but the light within its gaping eye sockets and jaw sparked and danced, "Yes, you are that, but you are more, too… I know you, spirit-eater. You are an irony that walks, two fates bound together, both severed and incomplete. And you have brought others. Cast-offs, discarded souls such as this priestess. She is of the higher planes, tinged with Kelemvor's blind philosophy, salted with the wretched tears of Ilmater's pity. Are you here because Ilmater has done what Kelemvor once did?"

"Ilmater forsakes no one, Myrkul," Kaelyn cooed, "Even one who commit such atrocities as building the Wall of the Faithless and making vessels to feed its strength."

Wow, Kaelyn, tell us how you really feel, Gann quipped internally. Adahni kept her face straight.

"Ilmater may take pity on you, little bird, but Kelemvor severed you like a gangrenous hand. He smelled the death of faith o you, with all his "pragmatism," he can be crueler than I. But he will not rule the dead better for it, I think."

"He rules the dead now, Myrkul. One could even say he rules dead gods as they drift in this empty place," Kaelyn replied.

"Perhaps," the dead god intoned, "It is an amusing notion. But your life embodies and irony of Kelemvor as well."

"I feel like 'irony' is really a poorly understood literary concept," Adahni observed.

"He knows not what he speaks of," Kaelyn said.

"Do I not?" Myrkul countered, "You sought to console the dying, soothe their pain and doubt. Then true pain came when you discovered where you were guiding them. "Doomguides." Apt name. What matters in healing their pain if the true agony is to come? That is what awaits them in my wall."

"It is only a structure," Kaelyn replied, "It will not survive time and faith. It will not survive me."

"Or me," Adahni said. Daevyn's soul within her second belly was making her bold. Or was it foolish?

"We are both of one mind about this. The Wall will be destroyed."

"You would have an easier time dismantling Mount Celestia, stone by stone," Myrkul chided, "Ritual and circumstance are not easily undone, little bird, and they are rarely accomplished by peace. Will you lead the living to slaughter and die for those already lost? What a sacrifice for you to demand of those who blindly follow you!"

"Time and justice favor me. You know not what you say, Myrkul."

"I know this. I know your grandfather came to your god Kelemvor in secret, before you mounted your great crusade."

"He lies. My grandfather spoke no words with Kelemvor."

"Oh, there you are mistaken. He appealed on your behalf - he apologized for your narrow mindedness, described you as a rogue grandchild that had not learned the rules, the drumbeat by which the universe marches. Your own blood condemned you, but it was only a small punishment, was it not? You had already discovered how thin the cloak of Kelemvor's faith was - it does not keep out the cold. His punishment cast you out of his halls, sealed the door of your home to you, never again will you walk on the slopes of Mount Celestia, hear the chorus in the House of the Triad. You are an angel left to walk the earth, with only her burning need for justice to keep her warm. A fairy tale with a bright beginning and a fiery end, I think. But isn't this the way falls always begin?"

"I, too, carry the blood of Mount Celestia," Adahni said, though it appeared clear that Myrkul had no use for her and preferred to address Kaelyn, "Walking the earth is not a fall. It is but a different path."

"Some fall, it is true, but others victory and justice sustain until they reach the gates of their enemy."

"A crusader's heart," the dead god observed, "Follow the same path, and the destination will be no different, little dove. I should have devised punishments and prisons for ones such as you, little priestess, who drift from god to god leaving tracks in the ashes of your smoldering faith."

"Your wall will not endure," Kaelyn said, though her voice shook just a bit, "Like you, it will die."

"I have accepted death," Myrkul replied, "You, however, perhaps in guarding death's kingdom you thought such fates were beneath you. When you go before Kelemvor, little dove, see what he says to your reasons and your appeals. Ask him to dispense with ritual, with the agonies of the Wall, and listen to his answer. At that moment, you will fall. You will know that the Planes turn and justice does not drive them."

"Once you were the lord of decay, of corruption, of wasting away, and now you are at the mercy of all these things. It makes me suspect the universe is just," the priestess said, barely keeping the edge of bitterness from her voice.

"Like your former god, you favor blunt action and brute force with little regard for what such actions cause further down the road. And perhaps what you see is not justice - but only amusement and irony - two things which I value much more."

"Again with the irony, are you sure you know what that means?" Adahni asked.

"It really is a poorly understood literary device," Gann said.

"And you, are you not bound for my Wall when you die?"

Adahni looked over at the hagspawn in surprise, a sick feeling creeping over her, not unlike the dread she felt upon seeing Bishop's face among the damned. She imagined the three of them, trapped with the wretched tormented therein.

"If the Wall still stands when death comes for me, I will crack it from within."

"Braver and stronger have tried, spawn of hags. Despite your ego, the universe does not bend to your whims, and it is I who set the rules long ago. But you still do not believe in gods or faith, even as you look upon my corpse? I suppose to believe in ones such as me - for you, that is a death of sorts - and no less painful than dying within my Wall of the Faithless. And what other detritus clings to you, spirit-eater? The red woman, she has been here before. All that she is now, she owes to me, and to you, spirit-eater."

Adahni turned to Safiya.

She is the Red Woman? Gann thought at her.

"Your memory is fading faster than your name, old god, and you're wrong on two counts," Safiya protested, "First, I have never been to the astral realm before now, this is not a reacquaintance. And second, I owe you nothing."

There was genuine confusion in the dead god's voice as he replied, "But you stood before me just a short time ago, red woman, burning with rage and love in equal measure. What a shattered thing you have become, and ignorant of your own nature as the one you leads you. If only your beloved had accepted my judgment of you, your suffering might have ended long ago."

Adahni thought back to her dream beneath the Moss-stone, of coming into the thicket where her mind had conjured her lost loves. She had thought that that woman, the red woman, they'd called her, was Safiya at first. Then concluded that she wasn't. She filed that bit of information away for later. There were no coincidences. Safiya, and her voices, were clearly inextricably tied to whomever had set this ridiculousness in motion.

"But you, spirit eater. You of two fates, of the hero who plied the Sword Coast, the pirate who inspired dread in the hearts of many a seaside settlement… the mother of a child who continues a line of pain generations deep who awoke in a barrow, soaked in vomit and seawater. Of that one I know little. But the other, the Betrayer, Akachi, he is just as I left him. He is empty now, a ravening void that seeks always to fill itself up. To regain what the Wall took from him. sSo he steals what he lost - a face, a body, a name. These are masks to be worn for a time, until they are also devoured by his unending hunger. He has worn many such masks, and he will wear countless more once you are gone. The Betrayer's hunger was born in the Wall of the Faithless. I placed him there, and watched as his mind slowly drained away. His thoughts, his memories, these were torn from his grasp, one by one. Emptiness filled him, the hunger of the Wall. But before the Wall could consume him completely, I tore him free, so that his suffering, his emptiness would linger eternal."

"Ly," Adahni finished his sentence, "Eternally. It's an adverb. And Akachi is not empty, not completely. I have seen remnants of his memories, in my mind."

"You have seen delusions perhaps," the dead god corrected her, "The spawn of your desperate mind. Nothing remains of the Betrayers mind or self. Or else he would not be the ravening void that he is."

"Why me, then? Why choose me?"

"Oh, it was no matter of choice. He has become an empty, mindless thing. When he devours one mask, he simply waits for the next to appear. Perhaps your blundered too near, or perhaps someone gave you to him. Only love could be so cruel, I think."

"And what crime did he commit to deserve such a fate?"

"He raised an army. Marched against the realm of the dead, against his god. Is that not crime enough? For "justice." To tear down the Wall of the Faithless, and set free all the souls that I had bound within. To defy the order of the planes, the compact between mortals and gods."

"That's not how stories work," Adahni said, "He had to have a reason. Why would one of your priests turn against you, with no warning?"

"Do not presume to hurl blame at my door, spirit-eater. I cannot account for the treacheries of every mortal soul, only for their consequences."

"But if the Betrayer lurks within me, where is my soul?" asked the bard, though she already knew the answer, "By what compact have I been condemned?"

"I made a place for Akachi in the Wall. Your soul has gone to fill it. When the Betrayer's hunger finally consumes your body and mind, then your soul will dissolve into the Wall, and you will be no more. To reclaim your soul, to tear it from the Wall, only in that impossibility might you find your salvation."

"I feel like I know what's coming."

"There is a path already prepared," the dead god suggested coyly.

"The Betrayer's Gate," Adahni mused, remembering the vault wherein she had first encountered Kaelyn the Dove, "The door at the bottom of your vault in Mulsantir."

"The very same. The Gate is a doorway to the empire that I lost…. The realm of the dead. Do you have the key, I wonder? You possessed it once. It is that which you and the Betrayer had in common, the silver blade of the demigoddess Gith. The blade which awaits you, fully forged, in the sanctum of one who loves you. Who loves the Betrayer. Everything in place, almost as though this was planned out, from the start."

"And what sadist would lay such a plan? You?"

"I will let you discover that little morsel on your own, spirit-eater. I will not be there to enjoy the moment, but just knowing it must occur is amusement enough. Use the blade to open the Gate. Assault the City of Judgment, and tear your soul from the Wall. Finish what Akachi began. Your captains have waited long for your return. When the Gates swing wide, they will come like loyal hounds, tongues lolling from their mouths at the very thought of a new Crusade."

"The ones in the play," Adahni remembered out loud, recalling her journey through the minds of the hags.

"The fallen angel, his wings dark now, their luster surrendered for you. The dragon, bound by a debt she cannot repay. And the lich, craving the answers that lie beyond the Gate. But to whistle up your dogs, spirit-eater, you will need the blade. Only two portals provide passage from this drifting cairn of mine. One brought you here - the other will lead you to the sanctum where the blade and your ally await. Go quickly, spirit-eater, if you would look upon her face. You will not be her only visitor today."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Only that your ally is as great an abomination as you. As long as she walks free, my loyal hound will give chase, and run her down."

"Araman," Adahni said.

"Therein lies another irony. You saw him, in your dream of the Gate, saw him for the priest he once was who served me at his brother's side, and turned against me at his brother's whim. He chose his brother over his god, but it his defeat, I showed him mercy."

"I'm sure you gave him some encouragement."

"I imprisoned his soul in the City of Judgment. A hostage, until such time as he sends your ally's soul to its rightful place," Myrkul. Though he had no lips and could not smile, she could hear the smirk in his voice.

"But you are not longer God of the Dead. That throne belongs to Kelemvor. How is his soul still trapped?"

"The decree of a god is not so easy to change, and Kelemvor is loathe to reverse any judgment, lest he be seen as too human, too weak. And your ally's very existence breaks his law, as well."

"How many of me have made it far enough to stand before you?" Adahni asked, "How many incarnations of Akachi have you given this counsel to?"

The light behind the skull flickered, but the god remained silent.

"I'm the first, aren't I," Adahni said, "Nobody in all your centuries has made it this far."

"You should lay him to rest, for good," Kaelyn said.

"If I fail," she said, "If I fail, I would want my successor to have this opportunity, as I have had."

"You will not fail," the priestess insisted, "Grant him justice."

"I cannot take that chance," Adahni said, whirling, "You've preached this sermon, since I first met you. The Wall must fall. Now, we have made it this far, I dare not pull the ladder up behind me."

"Wise choice, spirit-eater. For I cannot be destroyed. You cannot destroy what is empty. Your quest is an unmatched amusement, better fare than any mummer's play. And, like any good piece of theater, it glorifies its author. He who gave the actors their parts, for all to see."

"You've wry sense of humor, Myrkul," Adahni said, "And have assured your existence - such as it were - at least from my assault. I cannot say I wish you well, but I will bid you farewell."

"The portal yawns before you, spirit-eater. Do you dare discover what lies beyond?"

As the dead god spoke, a portal indeed opened, in front of his great maw.

"Like every other time, I have no choice. I must attend to the task at hand," she said, and stepped into the portal.