parchment and a tingling that quickly grew painful, as though tiny needles had been driven into his pores. There was light and color.
'Oomph!'
'Dllarlk!'
They toppled from the gate and collapsed to the floor in a heap. They quickly disentangled themselves from one another and tried to recover their bearings.
Above them, a pulsing void of emptiness swirled in the air-the other side of the gate that they had just traveled through. With each pulse, it pulled the hairs upright on Gale's arms and head, like a tide trying to pull him back to sea. The pull of the void.
He took a deep breath, inhaled the acrid and coppery air of the real guildhouse. He sat up and looked around.
Corpse after bloody corpse Uttered the hall, over twenty of them, all gutted and decapitated. They were the ghouls he and Jak had slaughtered in their vaporous forms back in the Abyss.
Jak stared at the slaughter. 'Dark,' he said in wonder.
Looking upon the carnage, Cale felt no horror, just a distant, grim satisfaction. The ghouls were twisted evil creatures-irredeemable horrors-and he and Jak had done what they had to.
He surveyed the rest of the guildhouse, the real guildhouse-wood plank floors, piles of broken furnishings, heaps of filth. The whole was lit by the familiar flickering of torches. They had made it back alive.
He was surprised to find his strength returning, the energy of home apparently replacing that sapped by the Abyss. With the return of feeling came a heightening of pain-his ribs ached sharply and the gash in his torso throbbed with every beat of his heart.
The pain of being alive, he supposed. The pain of the human condition. He welcomed the sensation. Better that than the oblivion of the void.
Revivified, if not quite whole, he looked at Jak with raised eyebrows.
'Jak?'
The little man nodded. 'I feel it too. It's replacing the life we lost to the Abyss.' After a thoughtful pause, he added, 'But it can't replace the life-force consumed by Yrsillar.'
Yrsillar. He'd be coming as soon as he realized that his spell had not killed them. Cale climbed to his feet, one hand holding his blade, one hand holding the felt mask.
'Let's do this,' he said, and helped Jak to his feet. 'Hell be coming.'
Jak nodded, pulled out his holy symbol. 'First some heating. We're both wounded.'
Without waitingfora reply, he chanted the words to a spell and laid a magically charged hand on Gale's arm. Gale's bruised ribs instantly stopped aching and the gash in his torso closed. Jak cast another on himself, sealed the slash in his back and the scratches about his face and head.
'That's it, Cale, that's all I can do,' Jak said as he pocketed his holy symbol.
Gale nodded, held up his blade. 'Well make do with only these, then.'
, Jak chuckled softly, indicated Gale's shredded cloak and torn leather armor. 'Not exactly in the best shape for this though, are we?'
'We'll be all right,' Cale reassured him. 'We've got an extra ally now,' He showed Jak the felt mask he held in his hand.
The Mttle man took in Cale's meaning, nodded knowingly. 'You've accepted then?'
'I've accepted. Let's go.'
Together, they turned and walked for the doors that opened onto the shrine of Mask, his god. Jak fell in beside him.
Before they had taken five paces, the sound of an opening gate from within the shrine gave them pause. The voice of fee Righteous Man, the voice of Yrsillar, came through the doors.
'Erevis Cale! You will face me!' want nothing more,' Gale muttered, and made for the doors.
As they walked, Jak grabbed Gale's forearm. 'Remember, he's weaker here, but hell still have magic. We need to be careful.'
'We will.' He looked down on Jak and held up the felt mask. 'I have to face him in the shrine. We fought him on his turf. Now well fight him on mine.'
Jak eyed the mask, nodded in understanding, and the two friends strode for the shrine.
As he walked- Gale thought of Thazienne, of Tha-malon and Stormweather, of the warped Night Knives, the uncountable dead inadvertently caught in this demonic nightmare. He gripped his blade and the mask tightly. A reckoning was finally at hand. He jerked open the shrine doors.
Burned pews and charred ghoul corpses lay scattered about the room, the aftereffect of the magical globe Gale had exploded in the shrine two days earlier. The rest of the room remained intact, and Yrsillar, now in the form of the Righteous Man, stood in the center aisle halfway between the shrine doors and the altar to Mask. A gate swirled behind him, the doorway through which he had transported himself back.
Having seen the awful majesty of the demon lord in his true form, Gale could hardly conceive how the guildmaster's body contained such a being.
As though in answer to his thought, a distortion began to take shape around the Righteous Man's slight frame. Flickering tongues of nothingness danced around the Righteous Man's body that obscured his human form and suggested the awful magnificence of Yrsillar's true shape. To Gale, the Righteous Man's body seemed ready to burst at the seams, to vomit forth the truth of Yrsillar's being from the lie of the guildmaster's form.
'Gome, then,' the demon hissed.
Without hesitation, Jak jerked free two throwing daggers. Silvery blurs in the torchlight, they sliced through t?e air for Yrsillar's throat.
Casually, Yrsillar sidestepped the first blade, then shot forth a thin arm to snatch the second dagger out of midair. Quick as a striking snake, he hurled the blade back at them.
It streaked past Gale's ear before he could move, missing by sheer luck, and sunk all the way to the hilt in the wood of the doorjamb.
'Dark,' Jak breathed.
Gale nodded agreement but said nothing. The strength behind that throw had been superhuman, demonic. That meant that the frailties of the Righteous Man's body did not limit Yrsillar in this human-demon form. The realization alarmed him because it meant Yrsillar would not be as weak as they had hoped. It also exhilarated him because it perhaps meant that the demon lord could be killed, not simply transported back to the Abyss;:; v; ' i:^:;•::,: He had no more time to ponder, Yrsillar advanced, strode boldly for them, the limp of the Righteous Man no longer in evidence. The distortion about his body became increasingly defined as he neared. The terrible form of Yrsillar expanded with each step and dwarfed the human body that struggled to contain it.
'Your death will be long, Champion of a paltry power, long and painful.'
Gate and Jak spread as far apart as the aisle per* mitted.
'Be careful,' Gale said out of the side of his mouth.
'I'm always careful,' Jak replied.
Yrsillar ignored Jak and headed directly for Gale. He bore no weapons.
Gale backed off, drawing him in, blade held defensively before him. 'Come on,' he breathed. 'Come on.'
From behind Yrsillar, Jak rose up and charged, short sword aimed straight for the creature's back.
Yrsillar whirled halfway around, sidestepped Jak's stab, and backhanded the little man's jaw. Blood and spit flew from Jak's mouth.
'Unngh.' Jak flipped head over heels from the force of the blow and crumbled to the shrine floor.
Cale lunged forward and stabbed Yrsillar through the abdomen. He drove the long sword through the distortion and all the way into the Righteous Man's thin body until the tip of the blade burst out the other side his ribs. Blood poured from the wound.
'Arrrgh!' Yrsillar sagged. The demonic distortion faded, shrank back into the body of the Righteous Man. Cale grimaced and twisted the blade. He felt the metal shear at the demon's organs, gave his anger free play.
'That's for the Uskevren, ecthain,' he hissed into the wrinkled face of the Righteous Man.
It was Yrsillar's voice that groaned with pain. The demon still had possession of the Righteous Man. Cale drove the blade in farther, pushing the body of the Righteous Man across the aisle.
Yrsillar spat blood and grimaced in pain.
