Midnight's mask

CHAPTER 9

"Get your men ready," Cale said to Evrel.

In no time, word went from the mate and captain to the crew. So, too, did the description of who and what Cale, Magadon, and Jak were, or once were. Few of the crew made eye contact after that. All muttered, but all obeyed the captain's orders. They seemed both fascinated and fearful.

Cale took a position in the bow, standing just over the leering wooden demon's face that decorated Demon Binder's prow. Jak and Magadon stood beside him. Behind them on the deck and above them in the rigging, the crew waited in pensive silence. The calm sea, as black as jet under the starlight, seemed also to be waiting.

Cale imagined in his mind's eye the towering cliffsides of Traitor's Isle, the long shadow cast over the water by its tower, even by starlight. He started to draw the night around him, around Magadon, around Jak. He spread it out to the rest of the ship like a dire fog. A rustle went through the crew but they held their ground.

Cale waited until pitch cloaked the entire vessel. He alone could see within the darkness. He reached out with his mind, found the correspondence between the darkness that shrouded him and the darkness near Traitor's Isle. He tried to take the entire ship in his mental grasp. It defied an easy grip. He struggled, sweating, praying, asking Mask for aid. Finally he mastered the darkness and took it.

Somewhere, he knew, Mask was pleased.

Cale felt the flutter in his gut that bespoke instantaneous transport. He let the darkness subside. It flowed off the ship's decks like mist to reveal. . water the color of pitch, a sky as dark as a demon's heart. A sourceless ochre light backlit clouds shaped like the faces of screaming men. Green lightning ripped the sky to pieces.

The Plane of Shadow.

"Trickster's toes," Jak muttered.

The crew echoed Jak's sentiment. A chorus of oaths ran from bow to stern, a fearful chorus.

"Erevis…." Magadon began.

The feat had left Cale drained, wrung out. His body felt worn; his breath came hard. He sagged, leaned on Magadon for support.

Magadon took his weight. The guide stared at him, studied him.

"You look different, Erevis," Magadon said. "The shadows around you.. they're darker."

Cale nodded. He had taxed himself, sunk deeper into the shadows, and even still he had not quite accomplished what he wished. He saw Mask's hand in it.

Evrel climbed the forecastle, eyes hard, brow furrowed. When he saw Cale, he stopped in his tracks.

"Talos, man! Your eyes."

Cale looked away. He knew his eyes glowed yellow on the Plane of Shadow.

"What do you want, Evrel?" Magadon asked, his voice stern.

"What do I-? Look around. Where are we? This is no sea that I know."

The crew nearby murmured agreement.

Magadon started to speak but Cale held up a hand to cut him off.

"We are on the Plane of Shadow, Evrel," Cale said, his voice heavy with fatigue. "Do not be concerned. I'll be taking us back to Faerun soon. This is just a waystop."

"Soon?" Evrel asked, and rubbed his chin.

"Soon," Cale answered. The shadows nourished him and his strength already was returning. He patted Magadon on the shoulder and stood on his own feet.

A cry from up the mast drew their eyes.

"There, look there!" called a crewman, and pointed to the sky.

High above them, a swirling mass of black forms like a flock of giant bats detached from a cloud and wheeled downward.

Thunder boomed in the distance.

The forms circled and wheeled, finally headed for the ship. They became distinguishable as they got closer. Pinpoints of red light dotted the mass.

"Shadows," Jak said, and pulled out his jeweled pendant holy symbol. "Trickster's hairy toes."

Hundreds of undead shadows were streaking for the ship.

"Arms, men," Evrel ordered, and the crew started snapping up weapons. Those in the rigging and nests rapidly descended toward the deck to stand with their fellows.

Cale saw Mask's purpose then, understood why the Shadowlord had brought him back to the Plane of Shadow. He put his hand on Evrel's shoulder and shook his head.

"Unnecessary, captain. They will not harm you. They're coming for me."

"What in the twelve seas does that mean?" Evrel asked.

"Cale?" Jak asked.

Cale stared into the sky, watching the horde approach. The Shadowlord had put a weapon in his hand. He had only to use it.

"Put away your symbol, little man," Cale said, and donned his mask.

"Stay your hands!" Evrel ordered his crew.

The sailors looked at each other nervously but let their weapons hang loosely at their sides.

The shadows circled downward until they swarmed the air near the masts. Several creatures broke off and wheeled over the deck. They were humanoid in shape, but amorphous, trailing streamers of shadow as they flew.

Cale waited. Several descended to the deck, floated in front of him, and stared into his face. He let shadows leak from his flesh. Red eyes flared in response and the creatures flew back up to join the black mass over the mast. From there, hundreds of pairs of red eyes fixed on Cale, watched him, measured him. The sky was blanketed with a cloud of the unliving. The creatures radiated cold and the entire crew shivered under their gaze. Not Cale.

The shadows hovered there, waiting. Cale knew they were his to command. He held up his hands and let Mask's power run through him and reach into the sky. The cloud of shadows swirled in answer, excited, eager. Cale gave them only a single command, and his voice carried clearly into the sky. "Come when I call."

The shadows churned around the masts, around the sails, and their red eyes flared. Cale took it as an acknowledgement. With that, the cloud dispersed and the shadows vanished into the darkness of the plane.

The crew stood silent. Cale felt Jak and Magadon's eyes on him. He thought of Sephris's words to him: The darkness has soaked you. But there is more to come.

Cale knew it to be true. Mask had only some of what he wanted. The Shadowlord always wanted more.

But so did Cale. And while serving Mask had its price, it also brought power. The darkness answered to Cale more than it did to anyone. And now it had given him the means to catch and kill the slaadi.

Lightning lined the sky. Thunder boomed its approval.

"What in the Trickster's name just happened?" Jak asked.

"Nothing," Cale said. "It's time to return to Faerun."

Magadon said, "Are you.. able?"

Cale nodded. The energies of the Plane of Shadow had restored his energy quickly.

"Not nearly soon enough," Evrel said, and did not make eye contact with Cale.

"Ready your crew," Cale said to him.

In moments, Cale drew the darkness around the ship once more. When the pitch engulfed Demon Binder, Cale again pictured Traitor's Isle, seized the ship in his grasp, and moved it through the planes. The effort did not tire him this time; his power had grown.

He let the darkness fade away to reveal the sheer, rocky sides of Traitor's Isle. Demon Binder floated in the waters a bowshot away from the island's cliffs.

A satisfied murmur sounded from the crew. Even Jak and Magadon sighed with relief.

"Look there," one of the sailors said, and pointed toward the sky.

Above the midmast whirled a black maelstrom, a portal that Cale had left open between the Prime Plane and the Plane of Shadow. It hung in the air above the mast, an empty hole in the sky. Red dots began to appear within it.

The shadows were gathering.

Cale could feel their anticipation. He had but to call them forth.

"What are you doing, Cale?" Jak asked, and Cale heard the alarm in his voice.

"I am using the weapons at hand," Cale said. "I'm sending the entire swarm of shadows after the slaadi."

He knew the creatures would catch the slaadi's ship. They flew as quickly as arrows.

"What? What are you saying? The crew, Cale," Jak said.

Cale whirled on Jak. "What about them, Jak? They're in league with the slaadi, aren't they?" Jak did not quail before Cale's anger. "Maybe, but maybe not. They might just be a hired ship. And no one deserves to die like that, Cale." Jak pointed up at the gathering shadows.

"Dead is dead, little man," Cale said, and held up his arms to call forth the shadows.

Jak's hand closed on his cloak. "No, Cale. It's not. Listen to me. You don't see it, but I do. This is how he's trying to bring you in all the way. He sets you up to seek revenge and gives you a method, his method, to achieve it. But that doesn't have to be your method. I've said it to you before." He shook Cale's cloak. "Cale, I've said it to you before-keep yourself. Keep yourself."

Jak's words tweaked Cale's conscience. He stared up at the shadows, looked at his hands, at the eyes of the crew, the eyes of his friends. The horror on their faces brought him back to himself.

What was he thinking?

"Take off the mask, Cale," Jak said. "Take it off."

Cale nodded and removed his mask. He saw it then, saw it the way Jak saw it. Mask kept feeding him power a little at a time, just when he needed it so much that he would use it. That was how Mask hoped to win his soul, control him.

Cale would not allow it. He shook his head.

"No," he murmured to the shadows.

He knelt down, turned, and looked Jak in the eye. "I hear your words, Jak. We do it our way. With our methods."

Jak smiled, thumped him on the shoulder.

Cale stood and with an effort of will caused the portal to the shadow plane to close. The shadows wailed as the portal squeezed shut. The moment it did, a wave of fatigue nearly brought Cale to his knees. He leaned on Jak, who grunted under his weight but kept him upright.

"Are you all right, Erevis?" Magadon asked, helping Jak bear him.

Cale nodded. He took a deep breath and stood on his own feet.

"Mags, look through Riven's eyes, try to determine which way they're heading." He hurried to the back of the forecastle and shouted down to Evrel, "Captain, get this ship ready to move as fast as it can."

The captain overcame whatever wonder he felt at Cale's feat, nodded, and started barking orders. Within moments, Demon Binder raised anchor and lowered her sails. Evrel's crew even raised the topsails.

"Mags?" Cale asked.

The rosy halo around Magadon's head faded and he opened his eyes.

"Due west," he said to Cale.

"Due west," Cale shouted down to Evrel, who relayed it to Ashin.

Demon Binder was soon underway.

An hour later, Jak and Cale stood at the prow, staring ahead at empty sea. There was no sign of the slaadi's ship. Cale turned and looked behind them. Traitor's Isle was lost to the darkness.

"Not fast enough," he muttered.

"Let's remedy that," Jak said. The little man removed his holy symbol from his belt pouch and spoke the words to a spell. Cale recognized it as the spell with which the little man previously had summoned the water elemental.

When he spoke the final word, Jak leaned out over the prow and waited. In moments, two watery pillars as tall as Cale rose from the sea, keeping perfect pace with the speed of the ship.

Jak ordered them, "Help speed the ship and your service will be short."

The elementals swayed in response, offered susurrous replies, and vanished below the waves.

Moments later, the ship noticeably gained speed.

"Well done," Cale said.

Jak nodded, cast the spell again, and again. By the time he was done, half a dozen water elementals had hold of Demon Binder's hull and were driving her through the sea.

Evrel and the crew could not stop grinning.

"We could catch a gull on the wing at this pace," the captain shouted to Cale and Jak.

Cale did not smile. He wanted only to catch two slaadi and an assassin, and he wanted to catch them his way.

Vhostym listened with satisfaction as shouts of alarm sounded from atop the tower. Clouds of toxic green fumes capped the crenellations. Men screamed and died. Two of the roof guards jumped to their deaths rather than endure the painful death spasms brought on by the gas.

Before the doors, the ball of potential energy that Vhostym had left spinning at the feet of the guards exploded. A spider web of lightning shot out in all directions. Bolts knifed into the guards, blew them from their feet, burned their flesh, stopped their hearts. All of them died quickly, with arcs of lightning dancing over their still-jerking corpses.

Alarm bells rang from within the tower.

Still invisible-for Vhostym's invisibility did not end when he attacked, as most such illusions did-he spoke the command word to bypass his own wards and flew through the drawbridge and double door into the entry foyer.

Ten bewildered soldiers stood crowded within, weapons bare. Two tried to lower the drawbridge and open the double doors to the outside but Vhostym's spell held the portals closed.

"Sealed," one of them shouted back to a bearded sergeant.

The sergeant cursed.

"Get the priests," he said to another.

Before the soldier could leave the foyer, Vhostym seized the far doors with his mind and slammed them shut. He waved his staff and placed a seal on the door that would keep it closed.

The soldiers, their fearful faces highlighted in the green glow of the dimensional lock, whirled around.

"Something is in here," one of them said.

"Here? What do you mean here?" asked another, a young soldier with a thin beard.

Panic was setting in.

"Hold your ground in the Dark Sun's name," the sergeant said, but Vhostym could hear the fear in his voice too. "Lis, try the door again."

Vhostym floated into a corner of the room and softly incanted a spell. A wave of invisible energy went forth from his outstretched hands. The magic hit the soldiers, one, then another, another, until all of them went rigid, immobilized by the power of the magic.

They were nothing more than statues of flesh waiting to die.

Shouts sounded from the other side of the closed double doors. Something slammed fruitlessly against the sealed door. Vhostym heard an invocation-one of the priests attempting to counter his locking spell. The attempt failed, of course.

A sudden wave of pain wracked Vhostym's body, sent a charge through his bones. Not an enemy's spell, but his disease. He hissed with pain.

Not now, he thought, and waited what seemed like an eternity for it to pass. When it did, he put it out of his mind and withdrew a small leather bag and a wax candle from his component pouch. He lit the candle with a mental command, tossed the bag to the floor amidst the immobilized soldiers, and cast a powerful summoning. The candle flame turned black as he spoke the words. He completed the summoning by pronouncing the name of the gelugon devil he was calling. "Emerge, Kostikus."

The candle flared out in his hand and the leather bag squirmed, expanded, opened like the mouth of a beast. The bag's opening became a gate, a portal to the Hells. Screams emerged from it, the agonized wails of tortured souls.

"What is happening in there?!" shouted a voice from behind the door.

The bag's mouth grew until it was as large as one of the tower's doors. A silhouette filled the opening.

Kostikus stepped forth.

At his appearance, ice crystallized on the floor and walls of the room. Warded and incorporeal, Vhostym did not feel the cold radiated by the fiend.

The ice devil towered so high he had to duck to step out of the gate. His head nearly touched the ceiling of the room. Skin the color of old parchment wrapped a hairless head that looked like an exposed skull. Bow legs and overlong arms jutted from a thin, humanoid frame. The devil was naked. In one hand it held a spear as long as Vhostym was tall.

Vhostym knew that devils could see invisible creatures. Kostikus looked around the room until his gaze settled on Vhostym. The black holes of the creature's eyes flashed recognition. And fear. Vhostym could have annihilated the powerful devil within moments and Kostikus knew it.

"How may I serve?" Kostikus asked, nodding his head in a bow. The devil's voice sounded brittle and his respiration formed clouds in the air.

Vhostym indicated the immobilized soldiers and projected, Kill all of these where they stand and return to your Hell.

Vhostym did not want to waste time killing each of the soldiers himself. Besides, he took no pleasure in killing. For him, murder was a purely utilitarian exercise. He needed the tower empty and he wanted no survivors with loose tongues spreading the tale of its destruction.

The devil seemed surprised at the simplicity of the request but asked no further questions. Presently the towering fiend set to his work. His spear pierced the flesh and organs of one of the soldiers, then another. The devil laughed as he killed-a high pitched sound like the squeal of a delighted child.

More shouts from behind the door, then silence.

Vhostym turned his back to the gleeful fiend and cast another spell, summoning to his side a sphere of nothingness an arm's span in diameter. The void sphere would disintegrate whatever it touched. Another spell summoned a magical eye that, like Vhostym's incorporeal body, could travel through solid objects and project his vision whither it went.

Vhostym sent the eye, invisible to all but him, through the sealed door and into the room beyond. He transferred his vision to the sensor and saw the stairway and main corridor on the other side of the doors crowded with defenders. Few were fully armed or armored, and many still wore nightclothes. They must have poured out of their bedrooms at the sound of the alarm. Perhaps two score soldiers, three of the temple's priests, and two wizards waited there. All of them stood ready, the priests in front with their silver holy symbols in one hand and their blades in the other. Magical wards, visible as distortions in the air, shielded both of the wizards, who flanked the priests. Both held wands at the ready.

They were hoping to ambush Vhostym the moment he walked through the door.

Vhostym turned his sight from the sensor back to his body. With the devil still impaling soldiers behind him, he spoke the words to a powerful evocation, infusing some of his mental strength into the spell to maximize its effect. Just before he pronounced the final phrase, he mentally commanded the void sphere to touch the door. It did and the wooden slab disintegrated instantly into dust.

Vhostym completed his spell at the same moment the wizards beyond fired their wands through the door.

Energy streamed forth from Vhostym's hands, saturating the room beyond, and the tower's defenders began to scream. But not before a ball of flame, a bolt of lightning, and a wave of negative energy streaked through the door.

The flames, lightning, and life-draining energy passed through Vhostym's incorporeal form without harm or dissipated into nothingness on his wards. Only the flames from the ball of fire reached Kostikus, and the devil, immune to fire and heat by virtue of his fiendish flesh, stood in the midst of the inferno and laughed.

In the room beyond, the high-pitched, agonized screams of the defenders rose to a crescendo and ceased. A wet gurgle sounded for a moment, then nothing.

Vhostym floated through the doorway and into the room beyond.

From behind, the now euphoric fiend shouted, "Roasted manflesh!" and impaled a partially immolated soldier on his spear. The smoke from burning flesh chased Vhostym through the doors.

Every living creature within the room lay dead. Many were scattered over the stairs, but most lay in a heap on the floor of the main corridor. Vhostym's spell had left the corpses thin, pruned, desiccated. Night clothes and piecemeal armor hung from the dead as if they were skeletons. A layer of cloudy, pinkish water soaked the stairs and the floor. Vhostym's magic had sucked the water from all his victims' bodies, drawn it through their eyes, ears, their very flesh, and left little more than husks.

Vhostym started to float upward but remembered that he needed to kill the prisoners the Cyricists kept in cells below the tower. Leaving behind for the moment his magical sensor and his void orb, he floated down through the now-empty first floor to the dungeon level, blind for a moment until he reached the open space of one of the dungeon's hallways. Numerous cells and several torture chambers filled the level. Moans and whimpering sounded from down the hall.

Vhostym would put them out of their misery.

He took a small black pearl from his component pouch, weakened it with his mind, and crumbled it between his fingers. As he cast the fine powder before him, he recited the words to a necromancy spell whose power snuffed out all life forces but his own within thirty paces in any direction.

One of the prisoners must have heard him pronouncing the spell.

"Help us," the man cried, his voice plaintive and broken.

Vhostym finished the spell. The moment it took effect, the dungeon fell silent. Vhostym glided down the hallway, looking from side to side, and saw naught but corpses, all of them of prisoners. They had died instantly and painlessly, better than their captors. He floated up through the ceiling.

Nothing moved on the second floor. Vhostym was alone with the dried corpses. Kostikus was gone, as were the bodies of the soldiers Vhostym had immobilized. Vhostym had as yet seen only a few mages and priests. He assumed the temple's remaining forces had realized that they were trapped within the tower and were organizing a stand on one of the upper floors. Probably they had assembled around Olma, the highest ranking priestess in residence, perhaps in the sanctum itself. Vhostym would get to them soon enough.

Methodically, he moved through the rooms of each floor one by one. He easily countered the defensive wards cast on the doorways of important chambers. He found a few guardsmen and a wizard seeking to hide, and two guards trying and failing to squeeze out of an arrow slit. He touched them all with his void orb, reducing them to dust. He also used the void orb to disintegrate the various religious icons and statuary that he encountered. Slowly but inexorably, he was effacing Cyric from his own temple.

When that work was done, he floated through the ceiling and found the next floor abandoned. As he had surmised, the survivors had gathered on the fifth floor, in the sanctum of Cyric. Again, he took time to destroy the Cyricist iconography and ensured no one was trying to hide from him. He found no one.

Only a single stairway led up to the fifth floor, into a foyer with double doors that led into the sanctum. Vhostym hovered near the base of the stairs. He could hear chanting leaking down from above. He studied the stairs, activating a permanent dweomer on his eyes that allowed him to detect and analyze magical dweomers.

The surviving priests and mages had been busy. Several glyphs warded the stairs, as did a firetrap. Should anyone ascend, they would cause an explosion of fire, lightning, acid, and cold, and trigger an unholy symbol that would wrack the body with agony. Of course, Vhostym did not have to ascend the stairs. He could simply float through the floors. The tower's defenders had not anticipated that.

The wizard concentrated for a moment, took control of the arcane sensor he had created, and sent it up through the floor.

Though the eye, he saw that the armored skeletons he had seen in the room earlier now stood assembled around the top of the stairs, just before the sanctum's double doors. They were designed to slow him, nothing more. Behind them, just within the sanctum, stood nearly a dozen priests and mages, including Olma Kulenvov in a hurriedly donned breastplate and vambraces, and fully two score guardsmen. The priests and mages held wands and staffs pointed at the stairs, and the warriors held bare axes and swords. One of the mages turned to silence a warrior with a glare and his gaze fell upon Vhostym's sensor. His eyes widened and he gave a shout. Clearly, the wizard had magic that allowed him to see invisible objects.

Olma whirled around, brandished her platinum holy symbol, the jawless skull, and cast a spell that attempted to counter Vhostym's sensor. The priestess's magic met Vhostym's and was overpowered. Her lips peeled back in a snarl and she shared a look with the other priests and the wizards. All of them visibly tensed. They had an inkling of the power of their foe and it visibly frightened them.

Vhostym decided to give them another inkling.

Still standing near the bottom of the stairs, he summoned arcane power, pictured Olma in his head, and softly whispered a single word of power. "Die."

In the room above, Vhostym watched through his sensor as the priestess grabbed her chest and paled. The other priests scrambled about, looking for the source of the attack. Vhostym expected Olma to fall over dead, but the attack passed and she grinned fiercely. She must have protected herself with a deathward.

Prudent, Vhostym thought.

A shout of challenge rang out from the assembled troops.

"For Cyric!" they called, and "Come up, wizardling!"

Vhostym supposed he would need to use blunter tools. He softly intoned the words to a sophisticated glamer and crafted a highly detailed illusion of himself. He structured it around his annihilating orb, masking it. He sent orb and illusion up the stairs and into the foyer. For good measure, he caused the illusionary Vhostym to incant a spell as he ascended.

The entire stairway vibrated with the impact of spells and wand fire as the defenders let fly with wands, staffs, and evocations. Smoke, flames, and green energy poured down the stairwell. A scream suggested that at least one of the defenders tried to touch the illusion, encountered the orb instead, and was reduced to nothingness. Vhostym floated away from the stairs, estimated the position of the middle of the Sanctum, and floated up into the room.

The illusionary Vhostym advanced up the stairs and through the foyer, seemingly unharmed by the storm of arcane and divine power. The illusion continued to incant a spell that would never be cast. A soldier lunged at him, blade extended. When the blade hit the orb, man and weapon turned to dust. Two skeletons, mindless automatons, did the same and also turned to dust.

The defenders fell back before the illusionary juggernaut.

Behind the defenders, the real Vhostym began to cast one of the most destructive spells he knew.

"A ruse," Olma shouted, finally recognizing the illusion for what it was. She ordered the skeletons to cease destroying themselves on the illusion and turned around. Her vision must have been magically augmented, for she saw the real Vhostym.

"There!" she shouted, and pointed at Vhostym.

The wizards whirled, ignoring the illusion, leveled wands, and fired. Lightning and a green beam ripped paths toward Vhostym. His wards absorbed both as though they had never been.

"It's a ghost!" shouted one of the priests.

"An invisible wizard in ghostform," corrected a mage. She attempted a spell to counter Vhostym's incorporeality. It failed.

As one, the guardsmen rushed in Vhostym's direction, blades bare, snarls on their faces. Unlike the mages, they could not see him. Still they charged.

Vhostym finished his spell, adding a final vocalization that allowed him to sculpt the spell's effect around his person. When he pronounced the final syllable and held forth his hand, four fist-sized spheres of superheated, glowing rock flew forth. Two he directed past the charging soldiers at Olma, and one each he directed at the two wizards who had fired their wands at him.

The spheres slammed into their targets, knocked them from their feet, and exploded into an inferno of red flames that blanketed the entire sanctum in fire. The explosions overlapped, intensifying the heat. Soldiers, priests, and mages burned in the conflagration. Their screams lasted only moments.

As Vhostym had intended when he sculpted his spell, the explosions spared the space in which he floated. Clouds of flame circled around him but he stood untouched in the eye of the inferno. Burning men staggered through the island he had created, fell over, and died. Black smoke poured from their corpses.

Then it was over.

Vhostym surveyed the smoky room.

The soldiers' bodies were so consumed by the flames that they were barely recognizable as men. They lay curled on the floor before him, lips burned away to reveal blackened teeth. The skeletons looked like little more than piles of charred sticks. The protective spells on the wizards and priests had shielded them from some of the damage but the inferno had been so intense that it had overcome even their defensive wards. Almost all of them lay prone, motionless. Only the chest of Olma rose and fell, and her breathing sounded as labored as Vhostym's.

The pedestal, tiles, and murals depicting Cyric or his iconography had been burned away or reduced to shapeless chunks. The temple was Cyric's no more. It was Vhostym's.

He floated over to Olma, looked down on her blackened face, the charred, tangled mass of her hair. One of the priestess's eyes was little more than a seared hole, but the other stared out from the charred ruin of its socket. It focused on Vhostym, saw him.

"What are you?" the priestess whispered. "Why have you done this?"

Vhostym frowned. Humans, more than any race he had encountered in his travels, always sought to know why things occurred.

He answered, There is no reason that you would understand. And I am what I am.

The priestess's lips peeled back in a snarl. "I go to death with the Dark Sun's praises on my lips."

Thank him for providing me with what I needed, Vhostym answered.

He dispelled the illusion around the void orb and summoned the black sphere to his side. Olma's eye twitched when she saw it.

Vhostym caused it to touch her. A green outline flared around her and she turned to dust. She went to her death not with praises on her lips but with fear in her eyes.

Vhostym floated back through the temple and caused the void orb to touch all of the corpses, sparing only their magical trinkets. He collected the magical paraphernalia of the tower's defenders and piled it in one of the side bedchambers. He did not know what he would do with it, but it seemed a waste to destroy it.

After a short time, nothing remained of the former occupants of the temple but dust. There would be no bodies for Blackwill to resurrect and question. In fact, there would be no temple at all.