'What?' Tazi said.
'They will only recognize another Blooded One. You must become one of them if you are to lead them.'
'How can I?'
'In the corner there,' Szass Tarn pointed to the large vat Tazi had seen when they first entered the room, 'is where we create the Blooded Ones. The young are dipped in a vat of alchemical blood and when they emerge-'
'They're stronger and more powerful and easier to control,' Tazi finished for him.
'Correct,' replied the lich.
'But I thought the process only worked on the young?'
'Correct again, Thazienne. In the past, it has proven potentially fatal on adults,' he finished. 'I do not know what else it might do to you, or how long the effects might last, if you even survive the process. But it is a risk you will have to take.'
'My choice?' she questioned him.
'Always,' he replied easily. 'It is always your choice. Remember that.'
Tazi faced the gathered wizards. Then she looked back, swallowing hard. 'What do I have to do?'
'Climb into the vat and submerge yourself completely in the blood. When you rise, if you live, you should be able to marshal the ore forces.'
'If…' she pointed out.
Tazi walked over to the wooden vat that was nearly ten feet high and swayed as another tremor rolled past. She climbed the small set of steps along the side of the container and peered over the rim. She saw the maroon liquid roll and slosh with the quake, thick and syrupy, and she briefly wondered where it came from. She banished the question immediately from her mind.
Doesn't matter now, she told herself.
Tazi felt her gorge rise and burn the back of her throat. The smell of hot copper filled her nostrils as well as a burning whiff of acid. She swallowed hard and looked over her shoulder at Szass Tam. He floated gently above the ground, his robes barely brushing the stones set in the floor, and regarded her with his cold stare. Tazi turned back to the vat and climbed the rest of the way up.
She balanced on the tiny platform for a moment, and the room grew deathly silent. Then she crossed her arms over her chest and stepped forward to plummet straight down into the pool of blood.
Tazi cut through the liquid like a knife. The moment she hit the fluid, Tazi felt every part of her catch fire. Hot and cold sensations ran along her body, from the ends of her hair to her toes. She felt nauseous and light-headed at the same time. She wanted to scream but knew if she opened her mouth she'd be drinking the tainted blood. Images stabbed through her brain-foreign and familiar at the same time, and she felt a rage burn into her. Lights flashed behind her eyelids, and she twitched spasmodically.
When she could stand no more, Tazi burst up from the blood like some blighted phoenix, and she sucked in great drafts of air. When her breathing had calmed a measure, she grabbed for the platform and pulled herself up. She hooked a leg along the side of the tub and used that and her arms to haul herself back onto the platform. She kneeled there for a moment, feeling her heart pound so loudly she was certain the organ might rupture from the strain. Her leathers were soaked in blood, her skin no longer recognizable.
She rose slowly to her feet and spread her arms wide, her hands curling into fists. Anger boiled up within her. Blood dripped from her arms and her hair was plastered to her face and neck in thick strips. Tazi was a study in crimson. She let her head fall back and bellowed out an animal cry of fury and pain. From the barracks, the ores stopped their quarreling and gradually lowered their arms. They heard Tazi's call and responded to her in kind. First one ore then another joined until all of them roared back as one. Zulkir Nevron clamped his hands over his ears against the horrendous cry.
Tazi straightened her head and opened her eyes. Blood tracked down her face like a trail of ruby tears. She met Szass Tarn's amazed stare and said evenly, 'I'm ready.'
Tazi was lost in a red haze. She pushed past the astonished wizards and entered the barracks of the ores. They continued to howl and snarl but parted before her. Some smashed chairs and others beat their swords and spears against the floor. Tazi spun around until she found what she was searching for: a gate like the one in the darkenbeasts' pen, which opened to the mountainside. She pulled at the handle fruitlessly, foot braced against the wall.
'Open it,' she bellowed to the lich.
Szass Tam made a single pass of his skeletal hand, and the gate's lock sprung free. Tazi threw open the doors, and the raging ores streamed past her into the growing darkness. She cast one backward glance at the necromancer and charged after her troops.
The barracks opened up onto a gentle, downward-sloping stone field. Tazi felt the ground crumble beneath her boots. The heat from the mountains had turned much of the upper layers of rock to brittle pumice. To the east, the lava had made some progress down the peaks, and the demons continued to flow out of the crevices of the Thaymount. Off in the distance, Tazi saw the darkenbeasts swirling around Justikar and beyond them, the zombie troops began their march out.
A strange caw made Tazi turn her head and draw her sword. Not twenty feet away, a stable of riding animals was ablaze. The same intense heat that had cracked the ground beneath her had ignited the wooden slats of their pen. Tazi ran over to them and kicked out at the fence. Wood splintered everywhere, and the frightened mix of animals, eyes rolling wildly in their heads, burst out. Black unicorns and more ordinary horses galloped past her, as well as stranger creatures. One of the last ones to run past Tazi was Naglatha's own griffon: Karst.
She must have tethered it here, Tazi thought, and forgot about it in her hasty departure.
Tazi caught the beast by the neck, and it reared but couldn't break her fierce grip. Tazi swung her leg around the creature's lionlike body and hung onto to its mane with its mixture of feathers and fur. The griffon stood back on its powerful legs and thrashed about with its front claws in an attempt to buck Tazi from its back.
'No!' she screamed defiantly and held on tight.
Tazi had only seen a griffon once before in her life, though it was too young to be ridden. But, as a pampered child from a wealthy family, she had ridden her fair share of horses. And, as soon as she was old enough, Tazi had joined her brothers when there were mounts to be broken and displayed an aptitude for the task that surpassed her brothers, much to their chagrin. She hoped that breaking a griffon would be much the same.
Tazi wasn't disappointed. After a few minutes, the griffon settled down and seemed resigned to its rider. She kicked at its sides and clucked her tongue like she would've at a horse. The creature turned its large eagle head back toward her and glared with its golden eyes. And it took off in a grand, loping run.
Before the griffon had gone thirty feet, it sprang into the air with a great flapping of its wings. Tazi felt a moment of exhilaration as they soared into the air, the horror forgotten for one fleeting second. She pulled on its feathers like reins and turned the griffon, so they banked back around toward the barracks. Tazi leaned over to one side and shouted to the ores.
'To me!' and she didn't even realize she had switched from Common to Orcish, though the language was previously unknown to her. The ore troops stormed after her as Tazi headed over to Justikar.
With the wind rushing past her face, Tazi hoped her burning cheeks would cool. But the air was dry and hot and did nothing to soothe her. She could see the duergar cursing and shrieking at the sky, assembling his fell forces. Most, as far as she could tell, responded to him to one degree or another. As she glided in closer, Tazi saw that there appeared to be no end in sight to the line of monsters that spewed from the Thaymount, though they seemed to be mostly concentrated around one of the central peaks.
Creatures the likes of which Tazi had never seen, even in nightmares, crawled down the steep slopes. There were darkenbeasts by the thousands streaming from their caves. Unlike the others, these creatures had burning red eyes, and their bones glowed red as well-not the green and purple she had seen before. Otherwise, there was little else that set them apart from the creatures under their own control. Lamias slithered from their dens by the dozens. But these sluglike creatures were fat and bloated like corpses left too long in the sun. Mostly gray, they had long, stringy hair and shiny bodies. By the red radiance of the lava and the eruptions, Tazi realized they left a slime trail behind them, and her gut instinct told her that trail would be poisonous.
She tugged along the griffons left flank, and they banked that way, slowly gliding down to the dwarf. But in the other direction, Tazi observed a different group of Eltab's forces. Climbing with great expertise against the
