The Hand set off from the ruins of Yalura with Farendol in the lead, the lurid red light of Gendor’s Comet glowing ominously on their right before the rising winds lifted enough dust into the air to obscure it. Despite the danger of the growing storm, they were all relieved when the comet was hidden – it had seemed a malevolent eye watching them. Exhaustion, no doubt, and yet a lingering dread seemed to hang over the group…

That feeling was not assuaged an hour or so later, when the ground beneath their feet began to shake and roll. The earthquake lasted only 10 seconds, but it was all Toran and Korwin could do to keep the mules from bolting in their sudden panic. Despite the increasing sting of the wind-whipped dust, Farendol, with Mariala’s assistance, took a few minutes to sooth the spooked beasts.

Once the mules had regained some of their usual phlegmatic calm, he gestured the group to continue, yelling over the shriek of the wind that they should reach refuge within an hour, no more than two.

“Where are we going, exactly?” Devrik bellowed to the Druid as he resumed his place at the head of the line next to him.

“It is an old Royal Armory, and mostly underground,” the Telnori replied, barely audible as he pulled his scarf more tightly over his nose and mouth. “When last I saw it, 150 years ago, it was still intact, no reason for that to have changed.”

With that he pulled ahead, urging his companions to greater speed, though the shifting dust made the footing treacherous, and the wind was beginning to sting exposed skin raw. If not for the quartz goggles he had given them, the group would have been blind by now, as well as almost deaf. As it was, Vulk had to lead Barbarian 55 by the hand, since the warrior had no goggles and so was forced to cover his eyes as well as his nose and mouth with scarves and cloak.

Time seemed to lose its grip on the group as they staggered northwestward, feet slipping in the dust, the wind ever-increasing and seeming now to come from every side, and the light of moons, stars and comet all swallowed up in endless blackness. Even when Farendol, Vulk and Devrik summoned arcane lights, they pierced the swirling gray gloom for only a few feet before being swallowed as well.

No one was really sure how long they had been traveling when the second earthquake struck. Toran’s Khundari senses detected it first, and at almost the same instant as the mules – he grabbed tight at the lead line he held, pulling the beast’s head down, prepared to calm it.

But Korwin, lacking any warning, had his own lead line ripped from his hand, his panicked mule dashing into the murk as the earth began to heave and buckle. Toran, sensing more than seeing its bulk as it passed him, made a grab at it… but in doing so lost his grip on his own beast. With a curse he watched his mule disappear into the dark after its partner.

There was, quite literally, a king’s ransom in the saddle bags on those two animals, and it took no time at all for both Toran and Korwin to decide to go after them. While the ground still rolled and shook beneath them they staggered off into the dark in pursuit. It’s uncertain that even if they had been able to hear Farendol’s screams to stay together that they would have obeyed.

This quake lasted almost a full minute, and was much stronger than the first, the roar of the shifting earth almost drowning out the scream of the wind. Vulk’s barbarian charge was ripped from his grasp and he himself fell to his knees. It took several tries for the cantor to regain his feet, and he wallowed after the still semi-charmed warrior, calling his name…

Mariala was knocked off her feet almost at once, and by the time she regained her footing she had lost sight of both Devrik and Farendol in the maelstrom. She heard what she thought was Farendol, yelling something, and lurched off in the direction she thought they’d been going, eyes straining for a flicker of Devrik’s flame…

Devrik had managed to keep his balance, more or less, but in whirling around to grab for Mariala behind him he had let his palm flame flicker out. He couldn’t see her, but could just make out the shouts from the rear of the party, something about the mules! He started toward the sounds, but the winds whipped them around him confusingly, and he stopped. By the time he turned to where he thought Farendol was, he could no longer see even the Telnori…

Erol, bringing up the rear of the cavalcade, was lifted off his feet by the first shock of the quake, and slammed down hard on the hard, cracked ground, briefly stunning him. The almost subsonic roar of the temblor seemed to rattle the very teeth in his head as he staggered up, uncertain of the direction he’d been heading. Was that a shadowy form he saw there, one of his companions? He stumbled forward toward the dimly seen outline…

By a seeming miracle, some time after the shaking of the ground had subsided, stumbling around in the pitch black sand blaster that was the storm, the group eventually managed to find itself again. Toran and Korwin caught the mules, and Erol lurched up out of the dark behind them. A short time later Vulk and Barbarian 55 stumbled into them almost simultaneously from different directions. It was many minutes later that Mariala staggered out of the swirling darkness, while Devrik appeared a moment later from the other side of the mules. Only Farendol was still missing as the friends huddled together in what little windbreak the pack animals offered, putting their heads together to make themselves heard…

At that moment there came a sudden lull in the fury of the storm – the winds died somewhat, and overhead the light of the full Greater Moon broke through streamers of dust, dim but seeming a beacon after the utter darkness of the last few hours. And just visible a few dozen meters to his left, Toran spotted a dark bulk rising up from the rolling flatness of the Blasted March.

“There!” he cried, needing no more than a bellow to be heard now. “It might be a building, but even if it’s just a cliff or another ruin it will give us at least some shelter!”

“Yes,” Devrik agreed, his usual grating rumble even more unnerving in counterpoint to the shrieking wind. “It might even be the place Farendol was leading us to; if so, we may find him there. But there’s no point in stumbling about trying to find him – the winds could pick up again at any moment!”

And as if on cue, the fury of the storm suddenly renewed itself, seemingly redoubled, and the light of Aranda vanished as if the moon had been snuffed out. But they knew now the direction they needed to go, and it took only a few minutes to stumble their way to what they hoped was safety.

As they approached the hoped-for shelter another brief lull in the storm let them see that it was, indeed, a building – a low slung structure of stone, windowless and featureless, any ornamentation blasted away by five centuries of storms such as this one. Wide, shallow stone steps, at the moment scoured almost clean of dust, led up to great doors of badly corroded bronze, perhaps four meters tall.

As the strongest of the group attempted to pry them open, Mariala could see that the doors had once had carved panels, perhaps illustrating the purpose of the edifice… but try as she might, she could make no sense of them; they had long ago been eroded to nothing more than a suggestion of shapes and figures.

With much groaning and grinding of metal on stone, Devrik and Erol managed to pries open one leaf wide enough to permit the passage of the mule, once the beasts’ packs had been removed. As Toran cajoled the second mule into the darkness the winds began to rise once again, and it was with great relief that Devrik stumbled last into the relative calm of their shelter.

After hours of the senses-stunning howl of the storm, it seemed almost silent inside… but an echoing kind of silence. When both Devrik and Vulk had summoned up light, allowing Korwin to find and pull his lantern from a pack and light it in turn, it could be seen that their refuge was a single rectangular chamber, roughly 16 meters by 24 meters, which seemed to occupy the whole building. Dead glow stones were set in the walls near the 5 meter high ceiling.

Two large alcoves at either corner of the wall holding the doors sheltered large statues, apparently of tarnished silver, of what might be Telnori priestesses… except that the Telnori have no religion, as such. Whatever they depicted they were dwarfed my two truly massive statues, of an unmistakably martial nature, that flanked a great central column. The two warrior figures guarded a wide staircase that descended into darkness, and as the companions wearily set about making camp they tended to avoid coming too near the opening.

Toran was the only one undisturbed by the ominous stairwell, and volunteered to check it out for potentially dangerous surprises. Lighting one of the torches from a pack, he descended into darkness in a small pool of flickering orange light. The stairs went down perhaps six meters, ending in a three meter wide passageway that ran straight westward beyond his sight.

Moving forward slowly, battle-axe drawn, Toran examined the walls closely – good workmanship, he conceeded, for all that it was clearly Telnori-made. Drifts of dust covered the floor but the underlying structure seemed sound, despite the recent earthquake and centuries of who-knows-what other disasters. He could make out faint traces of color on some sections of the walls, but they were too faded and blurred by dust to make out.

After what he judged to be 15 or 16 meters Toran found himself at an archway opening into a larger space. Three wide, shallow steps led down into a chamber some seven meters across and 10 meters wide. The torchlight caught glints along the walls, and on closer examination the Khundari found that bands of various metals, of various widths, were set in the walls and that they encircled the room. Unlike the corroded doors and tarnished statues above, these metals seemed untouched by time, only furred to dimness by the ever-present fine dust of the Blasted March.

On the opposite side of the chamber from his own entrance, three matching steps rose up to what looked to be the room’s only other exit. But a sheet of smooth, featureless steel blocked the way, and a cursory examination yielded no obvious opening mechanism. Toran was as exhausted as any of the companions, and he wasted little time on the puzzle… it was unlikely that anything living existed down here in any case. As he made his way back to his friends he resolutely didn’t dwell on the fact that some things didn’t need to be living to be dangerous…

By the time he returned to the group and reported his findings, Erol and Korwin had prepared a cold meal and some light ale. After eating and some desultory worry about Farendol, the group drew straws for sentry duty. Devrik and Toran came up on the short end, and with resigned sighs took up posts at the door and the head of the stairs, respectively. In minutes the sounds of gentle snoring made it clear the others had dropped off almost instantly.

The wind continued to wail and howl outside, and to Devrik it almost sounded like fell voices calling to him… then the calls seemed to turn to rhythmic chants, almost hypnotic… but he was an old campaigner, and he had never fallen asleep whilst on watch in his life; he certainly wasn’t doing to start now. Of course that ale of Korwin’s might not have been… the best… idea…

Toran heard no voices, chanting or otherwise, on the winds. But the he did find the rhythmic breathing and snoring of his friends to be almost hypnotic in their own way… Mariala’s snore was quite lady-like, he thought… and an interesting counterpoint to Korwin’s deeper snore… lucky his training made falling asleep on duty impossible… and speaking of Korwin… maybe that ale… wasn’t such a… good idea… really…

Both Devrik and Toran jerked fully awake at almost the same instant, guiltily staring across at one another from where they had each slid down to the floor, and into sleep… but any thoughts of recrimination, self- or otherwise, were instantly dispelled by the sunlight streaming in through the now fully open doors – and the sound of birdsong!

As Devrik backed slowly away from the doors, drawing his sword, Toran moved toward them, eventually coming to a stop at his friend’s side, his own battle-axe in hand. They both stared in wonder at what they saw… the tall bronze doors where shining in the morning light, the bas-relief Telnori symbols sharp and clear and deep. The room itself was greatly changed as well – the walls now stained in shades of blue and white, the statues’ silver buffed and polished, and the glow stones bright with a warm yellow glow. The ceiling was a deep blue and set with thousands of flecks of silver, like the stars in the night sky.

But what really left them stunned and open-mouthed was the view out the open doorway – rolling fields of grain, copses of summer-green trees, and a small lake sparkling in the new-risen sun on a perfect summer day. And aside from the unexpected sounds of the birds, there was also the babble of running water and the rustle of leaves in the trees… sounds not heard in the Blasted March for over five hundred years! By the time the two erstwhile sentries could gather their thoughts together the others had awakened and were staring about them in equal shock.

“What the Void is going on?!” Devrik grated out, gripping his sword with both hands. As if that had broken a dam, the others all began to speak at once, exclamations of wonder, shock and disbelief. But before they could even begin to make sense of what had happened, the idyllic summer morning was suddenly shattered by the sound of clashing steel and fierce voices yelling in some unknown but harsh and guttural language.

A group of Telnori warriors appeared from the south, and rushed up the steps of the building toward the companions. It quickly became clear they were being pursued by an even larger group of – something horrible. They looked a little like Black Güls, but were very much larger than any of that race was likely to achieve; indeed, taller even then the Telnori they chased, by half a head or more!

“By Gheas, they look like Güruk-nai!” Toran blurted out in shock. “But that’s impossible!” The Güruk-nai had been minions of the Necromancer, his terrible shock troop, probably the ancestors of modern Gülvini… and driven to extinction in the century following the Great War.

There was no more time for thought or comment, however, as by then the score of Telnori warriors were around them, and their monstrous pursuers on the steps below. Four of the warriors turned and grabbed the two leaves of the great door, slamming them shut just in time – the guttural cries of anticipation turned to shrieks of thwarted rage. Metal weapons began pounding furiously on the bronze doors. Unfortunately, these seemed not to have been made to be barred nor locked, and several more warriors had to join their companions to keep the portal sealed.

The Hand had stepped back as the Telnori had rushed in, and it was only then that they realized that not only was Barbarian 55 not with them, the pack mules, along with their precious cargo, had vanished as well. But they had no time to digest this, as they were suddenly confronted by the leader of the Telnori soldiers.

“I thought the King had ordered all of the Younger Races evacuated to the coast days ago,” he asked in obvious exasperation. Tall, with dark hair, bronze skin and hazel eyes, he was, like most Telnori, beautiful. “Who are you and  what are you doing here, of all places?”

Vulk stepped forward to answer him, but had barely begun when a loud boom echoed through the chamber and the warriors at the door surged back as the leaves bent inward. They managed to shove them shut again, but it was clear the situation was unstable.

“Captain,” the man next to the leader said urgently. He was the only non-warrior in the group, a scholarly looking Telnori with ash-blond hair and pale green eyes. “We must hurry. If–”

“Yes, I know, Bertothin,” the commander barked, giving his companion a harried look. Turning back to the humans before him, he shook his head in annoyance and shrugged.

“I have no time to sort this out, and at this point it matters little – you are here, and quite frankly we can use all the help we can get. The Güruk-nai moved faster than we expected – already they are past the defences of the Khonira, and by midday they will be at the river. But they shall not pass the Ebony Bridge, the King’s Wards will yet protect the city.” He sounded more hopeful than certain on that last point.

“I am Elahir, Captain of the King’s Guard, and this is Bertothin the Keeper,” he went on, his piercing gaze taking in the group before him. “I perceive you are no minions of the accursed Necromancer, though you are no citizens of Serviana… who do you serve?”

“We serve the Star Council,” Vulk answered without hesitation. “And we are no friends of any creature of Chaos!”

Elahir frowned, and glanced at the Keeper, who frowned in turn and shook his head. “We do not know this Star Council you speak of, but if you oppose the Necromancer it is enough for me in this dire moment. Will you aid us now?”

A chorus of eager affirmatives caused the Telnori captain to actually smile, if only briefly. “Good! We must secure an artifact that lies at the heart of this sanctuary – not only to keep it out of the hands of the Necromancer, but to see that it comes to the King as quickly as possible! Now come!”

With an anguished look at his men holding back the deadly hoard beyond the door, he motioned the remaining half of his command to follow as he and Bertothin dashed down the stairs, the Hand right behind him. The stairwell and the corridor beyond it were lit by glow stones in the ceiling, and the walls that last night had been faded and dust blurred Toran now saw painted in abstract patterns of red, gold and white.

As they reached the three steps down into the room Toran had briefly explored the night before, the sounds of fierce fighting came echoing down the corridor from above – the Güruk-nai had broken through, and Elahir’s soldiers were doing their best to buy him time…

The room was much as Toran had last seen it, if much cleaner and with walls stained white. The metal bands seemed as shining and bright as they had before, and the steel wall blocking the exit as mysterious. Bertothin immediately dashed across the room and up the steps to the bright sheet of metal. He pressed his hands to the center of the barrier, and bent his head, muttering low-voiced words that even Mariala, standing closest to him, could not quite make out.

As eight glowing sigils appeared on the surface of the steel panel, across the room three battered and bleeding Telnori warriors backed down the steps into the chamber, followed by half a dozen Güruk-nai slashing viciously at them and howling in triumph. The three went down even as their companions rushed to join them, holding the monstrous fighters at bay.

But more were pouring down the corridor behind them, and Erol and Toran jumped in to join the fray, and Vulk called up his holy armor while drawing his own blade. Devrik began chanting silently, his eyes focused on the archway above them, and Mariala began to prepare her Fire Nerves spell… only to abort it as she saw a Güruk-nai, just inside the door, raise a blowgun to its lips. Mariala cried a warning, but too late, as Elahir staggered back, clasping a hand to his neck, and then collapsing to his knees.

A moment later the last of the Telnori warriors fell beneath the blades of their enemies, and only the Hand and Bertothin remained standing, along with three of the Güruk-nai. But more began pouring in from the corridor, too many more.

Until Devrik yelled “Duck!”

Erol, Toran and Vulk dropped to their bellies as a fireball flew from their friend’s hand, streaking over their prone forms to burst into a roaring sphere of flame just before the archway. Eight Güruk-nai briefly shrieked in agony and rage as they burned like torches, then collapsed into the  silence of death.

At Mariala’s call, Vulk turned and dashed to where she cradled Captain Elahir’s head in her lap. She held a black dart that she had pulled from his neck, where it had found a narrow gap in his armor. As Vulk sank to his knees next to them, the Telnori shook his head and looked grim.

“It’s no use, lad,” he said, grasping the cantor’s arm and pulling himself up. “I’m afraid I’m done for, curse the Necromancer and his poisons… but I have some fight left in me yet. That fireball has given them pause, but those monsters fear nothing, safe perhaps their master. The survivors will soon regroup…

“I shall hold them off as long as I can, which should be long enough.” He motioned toward the Keeper, who stood at the now open doorway out of the room. “Go with him, protect him, and he will get you to the heart of the Sanctuary. Take the artifact that we have so long guarded there – it is the Eye of Arial, the great gemstone into which the Lady of Heaven poured a portion of her vast power.

“It was a gift to the Telnori Kings of old as a shield and tool for them. But it has long been prophesied that the Shield would become a Sword in the hand of the King in a time of our greatest need. You must see that it reaches the hand of King Taharazod – he will use its power to animate the Iron Knight and defeat the Corruptor – and who knows, after that perhaps Vindus the Necromancer himself!”

With that he pulled himself up, and stepped away from the supporting grip of Vulk and Mariala. He wobbled for a moment, then seemed to draw strength from some inner reserve, and bent to pick up his sword.

“I shall stay with you,” Devrik declared, moving to the Telnori captain’s side. When the others started to object, he shook his head. “Erol, Toran, you must go with them, they may need your strong arms to protect the Keeper. I will follow behind, once we’ve finished off these beasts – there can’t be many of them left!”

Before anyone could marshal any further arguments six more Güruk-nai rushed into the room, with roars that curdled the blood. As Elahir and Devrik leapt forward to meet them, the others fell back to the open exit behind them and the waiting Keeper.

“Hurry,” he called, casting a worried look at the battle beyond them. “Once I seal this door, we need not fear the beastmen, they cannot open it.”

The companions streamed past him, then turned in the corridor beyond to look back as he moved to seal the steel panel. They saw Devrik decapitate one of his foes, and Elahir drive his sword through another – and gasped as a third brought a great axe down on the Telnori’s neck. As his captain fell in a fountain of blood Bertothin paused for one horrified instant – and in that moment a seventh, unseen Güruk-nai stepped from the shadow of the opposite archway and raised a blowgun to his lips.

With a piercing cry, the Keeper staggered back, clutching at his face. As he collapsed to the ground the shocked Hand could see the black feathered dart protruding from between the fingers that covered his left eye. Vulk and Mariala were instantly at his side, she pulling the dying man’s hands away, while the cantor plucked the poisoned dart from the eye. Bertothin convulsed and grasped Mariala’s hands tightly, his good eye seeking Vulk’s face.

“Hanar-Ariala-Ebeth,” he gasped forcefully. Then the strength seemed to leave him and he fell back. “Hanar-Ariala-Ebeth,” he repeated more weakly, then struggled to say something else… but his throat seemed to seize up, and in a few seconds he was dead. By this time Devrik had finished killing the last of the Güruk-nai warriors, and was just rising from checking on Elahir.

“I’m afraid he is dead too,” he told his friends as he cleaned and sheathed his sword. “But so are all the beast-men,” he added with a grim smile. “They may be bigger than Gülvini, but they die just as easily it seems. So, what now?”

“If they’re really all dead, maybe we can take a minute to figure out what the Void is going on,” Vulk replied from where he knelt over Bertothin’s body. Korwin had crouched down on the other side of the dead Telnori and was beginning to search him. At Mariala’s annoyed glare, he shrugged.

“He may have useful items we’ll need if we’re going to complete his task, as Captain Elahir asked us to,” he said calmly.

“Yes, but are we actually going to do that?” Erol asked. “I don’t understand what’s going on, and we haven’t had a minute to think since we woke up!”

“It seems fairly obvious,” Devrik replied. “Somehow we’ve been moved back in time – more than five hundred years, apparently, to the middle of the Great War, before the Desolation of Serviana. And if that’s really true, then maybe we can change the outcome…”

“Impossible!” Vulk said forcefully. “We’re taught that changing the past is not something that even the Immortals can do!”

“Yes,” Mariala agreed slowly, frowning in thought. “But that’s not the same as saying time travel itself is impossible. In fact, a large body of T’ara Kul thought holds that Nitarin Portals could just as easily be used to move through time as through space. In fact, Talorin himself claimed to have done it, and believed that he had created a… what did he call it? A divergent timeline…”

“The Church rejects that so-called ‘many worlds’ theory,” Vulk said. But then added after a thoughtful minute, “Of course, there is the Methankin Heresy, which claims the Immortals actually travelled back in time when they arrived on Novendo and found it a dead and sterile world – that gave them the time needed to bring forth new life, and for it to cover the world…”

“I don’t understand what any of that actually means,” Erol growled, kicking one of the bleeding bodies at his feet. “Like Toran said, these things sure look like what the legends say of the Güruk-nai, and we all know those Neandergüls have been extinct for five hundred years. I don’t know from ‘many worlds’ or ‘divergent timelines’ – I just know what I see and feel and smell.

“And it sure seems like we’ve gone back in time… and if so, nothing is going to stop me from trying to change what’s about to happen; I don’t give a damn about what the Church or anyone else says is impossible!”

“If there’s even a chance of changing the past,” Mariala said after a moment of silence, “or even of creating a new, better timeline… then I think we have to take it.”

“So, did our arrival here already change things,” Toran wondered. “Did we cause Elahir and Bertothin’s mission to fail? Or did it fail in, um, the ‘original’ timeline, and our arrival represents a chance to change that?”

“We defeated the Corruptor once before, in the future,” Devrik said with one of his grim smiles. “If this artifact of Elahir’s is as powerful as he says, then I’m sure we can help King Taharazod not only imprison the demon, but maybe even destroy it this time!”

“Past, present, whatever,” Korwin said, standing up with the Keeper’s satchel in his hands, “time is running on, one minute per minute, for each of us, and who knows if more of the Necromancer’s forces are  close behind these. If we’re going to go on, we’d best be doing it now… and I suspect we may need these.”

He opened the satchel to show his companions what he’d found – two sealed blue-dyed leather flasks of unknown liquid; a brown leather bag secured by a golden cord and containing black, loamy dirt; three square rods of translucent red crystal; and a large silver coin, incised with strange symbols that no one immediately recognized, although both Mariala and Toran thought they had an Ancient feel about them.

After laying out the Telnori bodies on the far side of the room from the stinking corpses of the Güruk-nai, the Hand returned to the corridor beyond the steel door Bertothin had opened. Toran tried for a few minutes, but could find no way to close it, so they reluctantly decided to move on and trust that nothing would come up from behind…

Ten meters down the corridor it opened up into another chamber, this one diamond shaped, with four doorways at the cardinal points and a large column of smooth, pure white marble rising from floor to ceiling in the center of the space. The walls of the room were white as well, but of a darker shade and of rougher stone, not marble.

Examining the central pillar more closely, if could be seen that eight sigils had been carved into the marble, at about chest height. The grooves of each had been stained a different color, and seemed to glow very faintly.

“These are the symbols of the eight types of magic recognized in the Telnori arcana,” Mariala said after examining them all. “Divination, Transmutation, Evocation, Abjuration, Illusion, Conjuration, Enchantment, and Necromancy.”

“Yes,” agreed Korwin. “And each in the traditional color of that type.”

He placed his hand on one of the symbols, the golden yellow of Divination. Nothing happened, and eventually they tried touching all of the symbols, with the same result. After a few fruitless minutes they decided to move on, exiting the chamber via the east archway, opposite to the one they’d entered by.

Another twelve meters of plain corridor ended in a cul-de-sac where the walls turned inward at 45° angels to create three blank walls. Excised into the gray stone of the central panel were three of the Telnori magical symbols: Illusion, Abjuration, and Conjuration. But these were not colored in any fashion, nor did they glow even a little.

Toran came forward to examine the dead end, looking for secret or magically concealed doors, but could find nothing. At Korwin’s suggestion, he touched his palm to the symbol of Illusion – which flared with a bright violet light, fading quickly away. Toran pushed and tugged and reexamined the panels, but nothing seemed to have changed.

The group turned and made their way back to the room with the marble column, where they then tried the southern exit. This led directly into a room seven meters square, with only one other exit, in the center of the western wall. But the group had reached the center of the room both doorways suddenly disappeared, leaving very solid looking stone walls in their place.

Only Toran had felt a slight dizziness as the walls seemed to materialize before them, and he examined both minutely. “These are very solidly built walls, and quite old,” he concluded. “They have never had doorways in them, secret, magical or otherwise – I’m certain of it!”

After a moment of thought, as the others continued to tap and pound on the walls and floors of their prison, he smiled with sudden inspiration.

“Hanar-Ariala-Ebeth!” he said loudly and clearly. And again he felt the slight dizziness as the walls vanished, to be replaced by the open doorways. He smiled smugly as the others congratulated him (although Korwin was certain he’d have figured it out momentarily himself).

“I think this room is linked to a nearly identical one nearby, via something like a Nitarin Gate,” he explained. “I felt the same dizziness I get when gating, and I knew it couldn’t be the same room!”

Able now to continue, the Hand followed the western corridor for twelve meters until it turned north, and then seven meters further on, where it ended in a cul-de-sac identical to first one they’d encountered.

“Not exactly identical,” Devrik pointed out when Vulk commented on it. “Look, the sigils are different – Evocation, Enchantment, and Necromancy this time.”

Like the first time, pressing palms to sigils resulted in a flare of colored light, but nothing else that anyone could detect. After more fruitless experimentation the group trudged back to the central room, and tried the northern exit.

Easily disarming an identical teleportation trap, they followed another eastern-leading corridor mirroring the southern one, to find another dead end. Here the sigils on the central panel were Necromancy, Divination, and Transmutation. More flares of colored light and frustration.

Eventually Mariala noticed a correlation between the sigils on the pillar facing each exit and those on the cul-de-sac walls, and also realized something else.

“They are protecting a powerful artifact here, right?” she explained. “Perhaps the way can never be opened by just one person – perhaps it needs three. A failsafe of sorts.”

So she and Devrik took the western passage, Toran and Erol the southern, and Vulk and Korwin the northern, carefully counting out their paces so that each would arrive at their panel at the same time, and place a palm to the sigil that matched the one on the pillar facing their exit.

Three sigils flared almost simultaneously, and with a low hum and grinding noise, the walls turned 45° left on a central core, opening the passage to all three corridors into an intersection with the first path continuing now to the west. Reunited, the group continued on into what no one doubted would be another test.

The new corridor stretched westward 15 meters to end at the top of a flight of stairs. Leading steeply down, they disappeared into a pool of still black water some three meters square. Two niches, one on each side near the bottom of the stairs, held statues of idealized young women carved from some translucent blue stone. The women held crystal bowls before them, and beyond them, on wide shelves set into the walls above the pool were two statues of recumbent panthers of shining onyx, with glittering green eyes of emerald.

Devrik and Toran were in the lead, and moved cautiously down the stairs, the others following behind with Erol and Korwin bringing up the rear. As they approached the water a matching flight of stairs could be seen rising from the far side of the pool, with a corridor beyond implied but not visible.

While they paused, contemplating the possible depth of the water and the practicality of leaping, freezing or otherwise avoiding it, a faint music came to their ears, from where it was impossible to say exactly. And rising up from the water were two of the most gorgeous creatures either fighter had ever seen… one was a lithe and buxom woman of piercing beauty, for all that she was translucent, as was the shorter, muscular man beside her, and equally breathtaking.

Although they seemed to be made of water, they also seemed to be warm, living flesh, and after a brief flash of doubt, both Devrik and Toran found themselves entranced… the figures strode up out of the water, moving seductively to reach for them… the female wrapped her arms around Devrik and bent to kiss him, while the  male did the same to Toran.

Completely ensnared by the charms of the water spirits, neither man heard the warning cries of their friends, nor noticed as they were slowly drawn into the water… all they were each aware of was the pure bliss they felt and the promise of more and greater to come… you could just drown in those blue eyes…

Erol felt a sudden “pop” in his head, and then he felt again the presence of Asakora / Kiren Frostwind in his mind. And with that whispering presence he suddenly knew what to do. Reaching into the Keeper’s satchel that Korwin carried, he drew forth the two blue leather flasks.

“Here,” he said urgently, thrusting one into the hands of the water mage. “Break the seal and pour the contents into the crystal bowl that nymph statue is holding! I think we’d better do it at the same time, though…”

He snapped open the seal on the flask he held, and after a moments hesitation Korwin did the same to his. Together they each turned to the statue nearest them, and poured what seemed to be simple water into the crystal bowls, filling them to the brim.

Below them Vulk and Mariala were struggling to pull Devrik and Toran back from the water, with little success. As soon as the water settled in the bowls, however, the two translucent forms suddenly froze in their seductions, then collapsed into cascades of water that soaked the two men as it flowed back into the pool.

Toran and Devrik shook their heads, and seemed momentarily bewildered, like men woken suddenly from a deep sleep.

“Why am I wet?” Devrik demanded in annoyance, shaking himself like a dog. Toran just peddled back quickly, up the stairs and out of the water, shuddering in horror. Khundari didn’t usually swim well, and he in particular just tended to sink like a stone…

After some argument, it was generally agreed that no one wanted to wade through the water, although it could now be seen to be little more than a meter deep. Instead, Korwin was allowed to try to freeze the water solid, a feat he managed to do, to everyone’s relief, without giving them all frostbite.

Once they had all slid carefully across the frozen pool, they ascended the stairs on the other side and found themselves in another corridor identical to the ones behind them. Another span of 15 meters brought them to another room, rather different than anything they had yet seen.

The corridor jutted out a meter or so into the ten meters square chamber, and ended. The chamber’s floor was half a meter below, and covered in a low ground cover of lush green vegetation. Taller plants grew in a great tangled profusion on either side of the room, leaving only a narrow strip of the ground cover clear down the center, leading to an archway in the far wall, where the corridor seemed to begin again.

Set in the ceiling was a strip of crystal panels running above the path, glowing with diffuse sunlight – if they hadn’t know they were many meters underground, the Hand might have thought it was a skylight. The light illuminated the central path through the overgrown room, but cast the sides into gloomy shadows. After several days in the barren sterility of the Blasted March, even gloomy greenery seemed a balm to weary souls.

This time Vulk was at Devrik’s side in the lead, and they stepped down onto the springy ground cover. They moved cautiously forward, and then heard Mariala behind them call out a question.

“Are those giant spider webs on those bushes? There, in back?”

At that moment vines suddenly shot up from the ground about their feet, and began to entwine themselves around everyone’s legs. Leaping about and hacking at the grasping vegetation, the group tried to avoid being held, but the plants seemed to spring up in increasing density – for everyone they hacked down, two more took their place!

One by one, the group began to be immobilized… and then things got worse. Half a dozen giant spiders, huge, black and hairy, multifaceted eyes glowing red, began to scuttle out of the shadows and move toward the increasingly helpless group.

Devrik lashed out with his sword, slicing one of the grotesque creatures in two. But triumph turned to horror as the two halves began to twist and flow, sprouting new legs, a new eye… in a moment there were two spiders where there had been one. Smaller, perhaps, but that was absolutely no comfort to anyone…

Even as Erol was hacking away at the vines that tried to restrain him, that whispering presence in his mind returned… and suddenly it was very clear what the solution to their dilemma was!

“Korwin!” he called, spearing a spider with his trident. “The dirt! Scatter the dirt around us, all along this path!”

This time Korwin didn’t hesitate, pulling the leather pouch from the satchel and tugging it open. Then he did hesitate, if only for a second – he really hated getting his hands dirty. But needs must, when a demon drives, so with a sigh he plunged his hand into the loamy black soil and began casting it about him.

Wherever the soil touched, the vines suddenly turned brittle, falling away into dust… and the humongous spiders stopped and then turned to scuttle back into the shadowy shrubbery. Freed from his vines, Korwin darted along the path, scattering dirt around his friends’ feet, and in moments the danger seemed to have passed.

No one was inclined to linger in the now-dubious charms of the garden room after that, and they exited with alacrity, into another westward running corridor of dressed gray-white stone. After another 15 meters the passage opened into a chamber six meters square, the room dominated by a large square plinth of black basalt, atop which a cheery fire blazed in a large bronze bowl. The yellow-stanined stone walls were lined with bands of black iron, six inches wide and maybe a foot apart, from floor to ceiling, which was five meters high. Set in the ceiling were matching bands of iron in concentric circles, ending in a silver disc set in the center.

The plinth was carved into sinuous shapes of snakes and flames intertwined, and from each of the four faces a larger snake head jutted out in serious bas-relief. The detail was exquisite, Toran notice, down to the diamond shapes lightly etched on the foreheads and running down the back… poisonous snakes then, he thought.

The room had no visible exits, save the doorway the group had entered through, and they began setting about looking for hidden or magical doors. Attempting to detect specific magic in a place like this, which was obviously permeated with arcane energy, was pointless, although Mariala gave it a shot anyway.

Just as she was announcing that she could detect nothing beyond the ambient magic field the single doorway into the room vanished, replaced by a blank stone wall identical to the other three. At the same instant the fire in the bronze bowl suddenly flared, shooting up to splash off the silver disc in the center of the ceiling.

Almost instantly the flame died down again, although to about twice it’s previous volume and size, and the silver disc began to glow… at first yellow, then red, then blue… within a minute it was white hot! At that point the glow quickly began to spread out along the concentric bands of the ceiling. The temperature began to rise noticeably…

“Toran,” Vulk called to his friend from across the room. “Did you feel dizzy? Is this another teleportation trap?”

“No, I felt nothing,” the Khundari replied, staring intently about him. “No, I’m certain we’re in the same room. But maybe – Hanar-Ariala-Ebeth!”

They all waited in sweating anticipation, but the glowing bands continued to spread outward, reaching the walls and then beginning to run down those bands. Within three minutes all the metal bands were glowing red hot, and everyone was forced toward the center of the room by the increasing heat radiating from them. Already the room was hotter than any forge, and the bands began shifting from red to blue…

Somewhat more accustomed than the others to intense heat, Toran continued to examine his surroundings, while Devrik tried to use his pyrokinesis to control the flame atop the plinth and Korwin attempted to summon ice and cold… both to no avail.

But the Khundari suddenly slapped himself in the forehead, and grabbed the Keeper’s satchel from Korwin. Rummaging inside, he pulled out the three square rods of red crystal and held them up. Yes, they were square in cross-section – unless you rotated your perspective 45°. And then they were diamond shaped!

“Like the three-person door,” he crowed. “Three crystal keys, all placed at once, and I think I know where!” He pointed to the etched diamond shape in the middle of the forehead of the nearest snake carving.

“But there are four snake heads,” Vulk gasped, the increasingly hot air beginning to sear his lungs. “And only three keys. Which three heads…”

Toran thought for a moment, and then shrugged. “The previous three-way lock used the west, north and south points of the compass… the Telnori are obsessive about the west… lets stick with the pattern…”

He handed a key to Devrik and another to Mariala, and the three of them took up positions at the three snake head carvings. Raising the crystals to the diamond shapes, on his command they all pressed downward. With a soft resistance the rods began to sink into the stone, until only a few centimeters remained protruding.

Immediately the metal bands in ceiling and walls began to fade from white hot, through blue, to red and yellow, and then to cool black iron once more. The flame atop the plinth shrank to it’s original size, and the temperature in the room dropped quickly from nearly lethal to merely very warm. Everyone was sopping wet with sweat, but they were alive.

After several minutes of gasping recuperation, it was Erol who first noticed that the walls at the north and south sides of the room now had large archways in them, leading to corridors beyond. After some debate it was decided to try the southern corridor first.

Only three meters up the passage turned back eastward, and after an equally short distance debouched into a six meter square room filled with the tinkling sound of falling water. Three basins of carved basalt jutted out from the north, east and south walls, with silver pipes above them from which clear water gushed out to splash into them. The walls were of a deep red stone, the floor and ceiling black.

But what instantly caught the eye and seduced the senses was in the center of the room – on a square of white stone, was a circular plinth of the same dark red stone as the walls, a meter-and-a-half high. Atop the the plinth floated a sphere of shifting, translucent energy, and within its heart was the tantalizing suggestion of… something… difficult to make out… but something infinitely wonderful…

Mariala tore her gaze away from the mesmerizing sphere, after some unknown time, and recognized it for what it was – another trap. Her companions all stood staring blankly at the shifting colors of the sphere, with exception of Toran who just rolled his eyes at her in resignation.

“You realize they’ll probably just stand there until they starve,” he said. “Or, more likely, die of thirst.”

She clapped her hands sharply, while the dwarf whistled piercingly, and they both yelled.

“Hey, wake up guys!!”

“Get your heads out of your assess!!”

With a start Devrik and Korwin suddenly shook their heads and looked away from the shining sphere. Vulk took a moment longer to come out of it, and it took several shakes and a slap to bring Erol up from his trance. In the end they all successfully threw off the illusion of the sphere, which thereafter looked like nothing more than a simple crystal ball.

“Not even a good crystal ball,” Toran snorted. “Look at all those damn inclusions!”

The northern passage, as expected, was a mirror image of the southern, except that it jogged west instead of east. But coming around the corner the group came to a sudden halt. Where they would have expected a room similar to the fountain chamber, instead they found a wall of dirt and stone where the corridor had collapsed.

“Well, we’re not getting through that, I can promise you,” Toran said glumly. “Not without a work gang of my cousins and a lot of pick-axes.”

But as they started to turn away and consider what to do next, Vulk suddenly made a surprised noise and darted forward. He vanished into the pile of rubble and dirt, his voice drifting back to them.

“It’s another illusion!”

Toran was the next to see through the deception, muttering angrily to himself that he should never have missed such an obvious fake… one by one the others came to see through the illusion, Erol again the last one to pierce it, and only then when Toran took him by the arm, had him close his eyes, and guided him through the imaginary wall of debris.

Passing through the illusory landslide, the group found themselves in a chamber about seven meters square, with walls of rough golden sandstone. The ceiling was vaulted and eight meters high, done in a deep red stone, with glow stones set around the edges. The central portion of the floor was raised almost a meter above the rest, and on this section rested a round plinth of red stone some two meters high.

Four sets of narrow steps curved up its sides to where, floating in a sphere of coruscating blue-white energy was a large transparent red crystal some 5” in diameter, faceted along the rim and back, with a smooth plane on the face, set in an intricately carved setting of silvery metal, hung from a heavy chain of the same.

It was difficult to make out the details of the carvings from the floor of the chamber, and Erol, Toran, Devrik and Korwin all moved to a staircase and began to ascend. But it became increasingly difficult to keep going, the air seeming to grow thicker around them. By the halfway point it had become quite impossible to move forward.

From that point, however, they could each see the top surface of the plinth, which was deeply carved with the runes of a Greater Ward, glowing blue-white like the sphere floating above it. And the details of the carvings on the pendant seemed like they were just on the edge of resolving… but never quite did so, although they left an unsettled feeling in one’s mind…

Coming down the stairs was almost as difficult as going up them, at first, although the effort got easier the closer they got to the floor. A great discussion then ensued about what they had each seen, and what it all meant, and what course they should take next. Only Mariala took little part in the debate, staring pensively around the room and returning her apprehensive gaze again and agin to the pendant floating above them.

In the end it was decided that they would have to try and dispel the enchantment that protected the pendant, obviously the Eye of Arial. It was unlikely that any one of them could break a Telnori enchantment that must be very strong, but perhaps if they pooled their power…

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Mariala finally said, as the other mages in the group prepared to cast the massive Dispel spell. “Something about this place feels… wrong…”

But the others would not be persuaded, feeling the pressure to recover the artifact and change the course of history. While Erol, Vulk and Mariala watched, Devrik, Toran and Korwin linked their powers and cast the spell… and Erol gave it a surreptitious boost…

There was a flash of violet light around the energy sphere encapsulating the pendant, and the flickering light of the ward began to flare randomly. And at that moment an enormous Güruk-nai burst into the room, roaring inarticulately and swinging a massive battle-axe.

Devrik, still partially dazed from the united spell casting, reached for his battlesword, but stumbled to one knee and almost dropped it. Vulk and Erol, not part of the spell, drew sword and javelin respectively, and attacked, to no apparent effect as the massive beast jinked and twisted away with speed and agility belying its size.

Toran and Korwin, also coming out of the haze of the joint spell, made their own moves – the Khundari whipped up his crossbow and launched a bolt at the monster, while the Oceanian mage began his Ice Needle spell. The bolt missed, and the spell would take a few seconds…

Mariala, shocked out of her worried funk, reacted instinctively, and with a gesture hurled a blast of Fire Nerves at the hulking brute. It hit, and the creature staggered back. Devrik was on his feet again, and preparing to swing his holy sword –

At that moment the Ward protecting the pendant fell to the Dispel of the Hand’s mages – and in that instant the scales suddenly fell from Mariala’s eyes, and she saw several things at once.

She saw that the room they were in was old, cracked and full of the dust of the Blasted March, the glow stones dead, the only light the malevolent red glow of the pendant floating above them –

She saw that there was no giant Güruk-nai in the room, only the Telnori Druid Farendol, grimacing in pain as his nerves burned, the pain apparently blinding him to the danger on his left –

She saw Devrik, poised to plunge his sword into the back of Farendol –

She screamed.

“Devrik, no! It’s an illusion! It’s Farendol!”

Devrik jerked his head around at her scream, but it was too late to fully stop the blow. His sword went into the Druid’s back, if not all the way through, and he didn’t twist and rip it out as he might otherwise have done. But the damage was enough. The blade pierced his heart and the Telnori died.

But with his dying thought, he send out a mental blast that was like a cold but bracing wind, shredding the illusions that fogged the minds around him, freeing them.

Devrik stared in horror at the body at his feet and the blood dripping from his sword, black in the ruddy light of the stone above him. Like Mariala, he now saw the reality of the room around him, as did all of their companions.

Before any of them could react, however, they were each frozen in place and pulled inward, to the centers of their own minds, where they confronted… something different for each of them. But the gist was the same – they could have whatever their hearts most desired in all of Space and Time. All they had to do was take up the pendant, and they would have it all, worlds at their feet…

Each one wrestled with their demon, not yet knowing it was all one demon, and one by one they rejected its temptations, piercing this final deception and stripping away the masks to see what they truly faced – an embodiment of Chaos and evil that promised only death.

All except one…

They were back in the red-lit chamber again, Farendol still dead at their feet, and the crystal pendant pulsing vilely above them. Vulk dashed over to the fallen Telnori and immediately began to channel his healing energy into the dead form, knitting torn tissue back together, preparing to try to restore life…

“It is Haranol, the Sakal-Ur,” Mariala said in horror. “The Elemental Demon Lord of Air. By all the Immortals and the All itself, what have we done?!”

“No,” Devrik said dully, staring down at the man who had gifted him his wonderful new sword. The sword he had just killed him with. “It’s not a disaster yet… at least, not a complete disaster. As long as no one touches the accursed artifact, the demon remains trapped within it and is powerless against us… without a physical form all it had were illusions. And we have survived those. Most of us…”

“But we can’t just leave the pendant here, now that we’ve broken the Wards,” Korwin said sickly. “I don’t know how far its power reaches, but if it ensnares some other unsuspecting traveller… don’t the Telnori patrol the March? If they come too near…”

“Yes, we’ll have to warn the Star Council, and stay… well, not here, but nearby… until help can arrive…” Mariala said, her numbed mind beginning to work again.

It was Toran who noticed that Erol, who hadn’t spoken since they’d broken the demon’s hold on their minds, was no longer standing next to him. He looked around and saw the ex-gladiator moving toward the stairs around the pillar, eyes fixed on the glowing pendant that still hung in the air, though it’s shielding sphere was gone.

“Erol, no!” Toran yelled, and leaped after his friend. But Erol, although apparently still under the demon’s beguilement, was a seasoned and crafty fighter, and he dodged the Khundari’s grab. Dropping all attempts at stealth, he now raced for the pendant, his friends in a scrambling rush to stop him. Just as he reached the top of the pillar, Mariala hit him with her Syncope of Shala in an attempt to put him to sleep.

He staggered on the last step, his eyes drooped, and his hand faltered as it reached for the prize… but momentum was (or was not, in the end) on his side, and as he fell forward his hand caught onto the pendant, clutching it even as he collapsed across the plinth.

For a moment everyone froze, and Mariala thought they’d done it, they’d saved Erol from a fate worse than death – and the world from a great deal of suffering. But then Erol stirred, and rose to his feet – rather bouncily, she thought with an almost hysterical internal giggle, quickly supressed.

The pendant was still clutched in Erol’s hand – no, not Erol, they could all somehow see. Perhaps it was the deep red glow in his eyes. Whatever now possessed their friend’s body raised the pendant and slipped the chain around its neck, settling the heavy stone on its breast.

“Well, isn’t this nice?” something said in a voice two octaves lower than Erol’s, stretching Erol’s face in a ghastly smile that managed to look nothing like the real Erol’s. “You can’t imagine how good it makes us feel to have a body again… and how maddeningly dull the latticed order of a crystal prison is to a being of pure Chaos. Frustrating, let us tell you!”

Throwing off their moment of shocked despair at realizing Erol was almost certainly dead, his friends moved as one to take down the creature who now occupied his shell… and maybe it wasn’t too late to save his soul, at least…

Devrik  shot a Fireball from his left hand, while at the same time throwing his battle sword with his right, as if it were a javelin; Korwin blasted out the freezing Breath of Arandu; Mariala again shot out a spray of Fire Nerves; and Vulk called down the blessings of Kasira on them all as he began preparing Abon’s Authority. Toran quietly faded into the shadows, slipping a bolt into his crossbow.

Haranol/Erol laughed deeply and in apparent sincerity as it was wrapped in flames, seared with cold, and nerve enflamed. As the visible effects faded away, its laughter died to a chuckle. It was holding Devrik’s sword, and as it looked closely at it a sudden spasm crossed its face, and it hurled the weapon to the floor – behind it. Then it regained its composure and smiled again.

“Ah, that tickled a bit… the Fire Nerves, we think. The others were just… refreshing.” It gestured abruptly, and a great wind suddenly began to swirl around the room. In seconds it had grown so strong that the dust and debris became like flensing knives, and everyone was forced to shield their faces lest they be blinded.

Then the wind broke into several separate whirlwinds, wrapping each of the humans in a fierce grip and lifting them off the ground. As they hung suspended in midair, on a level now with the demon on its tall pedestal, the creature frowned.

“One, two, three, four… weren’t there five of you? Oh yes, the little one… little dwarf, little dwarf, come out from the shadows… you can’t hide from us, you filthy little rat!”

With that a fifth cyclone plucked Toran from the shadows and whirled him into place near the others. Now the Erol-creature was grinning maniacally, eyeing its new toys in apparent delight.

“We thank you so much for freeing us,” it gloated, beginning to spin them slowly around him, like planets orbiting a demented sun. “And for bringing us this wonderful body… we would have made do with any of you sub-creatures, of course, but this one was the best of this pathetic lot, already attuned to our element.

“We would have loved to eat its soul, as we’ve done with so many others over the millennia, adding their distinctiveness to our own and increasing the Chaos within… but best to eject it, to take no chances, when so newly freed, and we are not at full –” it suddenly stopped, then veered sharply in another direction.

“Ah, how we remember the delights of these squishy bodies of yours! The many pleasures that can be squeezed from them… now, we can never remember… which of your types is meant to be fucked?

“Oh well, it scarcely matters, we’ll just fuck you all – we do remember that that was always so much fun. Especially once I’ve reshaped this body to our accustomed form.. you won’t believe how big all our… bits are… and sharp, too.” It grinned lasciviously, flicking a tongue that seemed much longer than it should over teeth that looked much sharper than they had earlier.

Indeed, Erol’s former body was visibly larger than it had been his, the skin rougher, the fingers longer… and the chest was noticeably broader, which apparetnly was beginning to discomfit the creature, as it casually reached up and ripped Erol’s breast-and-back armor off, dropping it to the floor.

“Much better,” it grinned again, and Mariala was horribly fascinated… despite the changes, it was still definitely Erol’s body, and yet the face looked very different, the animating spirit moving or holding muscles in a different way… and the body language was all wrong… and why the Void was she spending her last minutes noticing crap like this?!

“Now were were we,” the demon went on. “Ah yes, the sex… and then there’s the food! I’m sure you’ll all taste quite yummy, especially after I’ve filled you up with my–”

“Sleep!” Vulk suddenly called out in the irresistible voice of Abon’s Authority. And for just a moment they demon swayed, the red eyes half closing. The winds faltered, and the prisoners sank slowly floorward. But the moment passed, and the Erol-thing shook its head, snarling in rage, and seizing control of the winds again.

But before it could regain total control, Toran brought up the crossbow he’d kept carefully hidden behind his back, and fired at almost point blank range. The bolt moved even faster than the demon could react, at least in its still-weak new form, and pierced the creatures chest through-and-through. Unfortunately on the right side, not the left, and so missed the heart.

But it staggered back, clutching at the wound as red-black blood gushed from it, and the winds died away completely, dropping the surviving members of the Hand to the floor. Devrik dove for his battlesword, which he had landed near, Toran cranked another bolt into his crossbow, and the others prepared spells and rituals in desperate speed.

Above them the demon-Erol still stood, and the wounds in its chest were already beginning to heal… rage twisted its features, but Devrik thought he also saw doubt. And fear.

“Gah, you vermin are not worth our time,” the demon spat out. “Do not doubt that you shall meet us again, pathetic sub-creatures… and on that day, oh how we will make you suffer!”

While it spoke a whirlwind had been forming around it, and on its final word the demon vanished, gone with the wind. The room was plunged into total darkness.

Vulk quickly granted them all the Fortune’s Light, and they drew together over the body of Farendol, in grief-stricken silence over the loss of both the Druid and, more unbelievably, Erol. It took a few minutes for them to notice that Vulk knelt by the dead Telnori – and that he wasn’t dead anymore!

“I’ve healed the worst of the trauma,” the weary cantor sighed. “But he’s not waking up. I’m not sure what’s wrong…”

“I don’t know either,” Devrik replied. “But I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” He certainly hoped so, because then he wouldn’t be responsible for murdering a six hundred year old man who had befriended them.

“We have to get out of here,” Mariala said suddenly, shaking off the fog of grief momentarily. “We have to warn the Council… Master Vetaris... everyone! We’ve just released one of the most powerful demons in existence, and we have to warn them!”