'You're standing in my temple,' he said.
Azriim's gaze narrowed. 'Your temp-'
The word turned into a bestial scream that Dolgan echoed. The slaadi raised their hands to the ceiling and roared. Veins, muscle, and sinew lined their flesh.
Riven stepped backward, unsure of what was happening.
The slaadi began to change. As before, when Riven had watched the Sojourner transform them from green slaadi to gray, now they were transforming before his eyes into something even greater. A chaotic flash of colors sheathed the slaadi. Both went rigid; both roared at the ceiling. Their claws extended; tufts of skin sprouted from under their chins; they grew slightly in stature; fangs darkened; green-gray skin lost its mottling, became like dark slate.
Then it was over. The slaadi eyed him with hunger in their eyes.
Riven pulled his holy symbol from under tunic and let it dangle openly. He knew the slaadi had just become more dangerous but he held his ground. Mask had put the temple under his feet, and he was a Chosen of Mask. He would not abandon it.
Cale and Jak stood on the deck of Demon Binder, surrounded by crewmen, all of them staring up at the dawn.
'Gods,' Jak whispered.
Cale watched the rocky sphere slowly swallow the sun. He knew it was the Sojourner's doing. It had to be. Whatever the creature was planning, it was about to happen. Cale had seen enough eclipses on Faerun to know that a partial eclipse in one region might be a full eclipse in another. He knew that wherever the Sojourner was, the eclipse was total. The water rose, causing the ship to bob.
The darkness lengthened, stretched a shadowed hand over the bay. He thought of the Fane of Shadows, of Shar, the goddess of night, of Mask, of the Sojourner, of his own transformation, of the Weave Tap. He saw the thread that connected them all. He knew what he had to do.
'Go get Mags,' he said to Jak.
Magadon was meditating alone in a cabin in the forecastle.
'Tell him we have to go now, Jak. We're going to kill the Weave Tap.'
Jak stared at him for a moment, uncomprehending.
'We're going to act like heroes, Jak. Go.'
The little man grinned, nodded, and sped off.
Cale stared up at the heavens. He and his companions might not be able to defeat the Sojourner, but they could destroy his tool, stop whatever it was that he intended. Cale thought he knew how to do it-like him, the Weave Tap was a creature of darkness, created by the priesthood of the goddess of the night. Like him, it was vulnerable to the sun.
Jak returned shortly with Magadon. The guide stared up at the sky, pale eyes wide.
'Activate the leech on Riven, Mags. We have to move. Jak, cast every protective spell you can. Quickly, now. And the moment we arrive, divine the location of the Weave Tap. This time the Tap comes first. The slaadi are secondary.'
Jak nodded and began to cast. Magadon concentrated and a soft red light haloed his head.
'I've got him,' he said.
'Show me,' Cale said, and took Magadon's hand.
The slaadi parted to either side of Riven, crouched low. The creatures' transformation had changed their outward appearance little, but Riven did not fail to notice the coiled grace with which they moved. Dolgan flexed his claws and growled. Azriim showed his fangs and hissed.
Riven remembered that the slaadi's transformation from green to gray had granted them new magical powers. He assumed their new transformation had granted them still more such powers. He decided not to wait for a demonstration.
He showed his back to Dolgan and feigned a charge at Azriim, who leaped backward. As Riven had expected, Dolgan lunged at his exposed back.
Riven spun a half-circle and slashed a crosscut at Dolgan's throat with his right saber. The move surprised the slaad, who could do nothing but sacrifice his arm to save his neck. The saber cut hard into the slaad's bicep. The blow should have sunk halfway through the muscle, but instead cut only a deep gash into the slaad's flesh.
Grunting with pain and dripping black blood, the slaad swung wildly at Riven with the claws of his other hand. Riven had expected the attack and tried to ride the momentum of his slash into a full spin out of arm's reach, but he was too slow. The slaad's transformation had made him faster, and his claws caught Riven's back and tore through cloak and flesh to cause a painful slash. Riven grimaced and chopped with his left saber at Dolgan's head, but the slaad used the momentum of his own swing and bounded a few steps away from Riven.
He snarled as the wound in his arm began to close.
Riven caught motion out of the corner of his eye-Azriim. He doubled up his sabers in his right hand, jerked a dagger from his belt, and flung it at the slaad. The short blade flew true and hit Azriim in his chest, but deflected off his hide as if it were a breastplate. The slaad pointed a clawed finger at Riven. A sickly green beam issued from the digit and hit Riven in the stomach.
Riven's heart stopped. He gasped, clutched his chest, and fell to all fours. He tried to pull in a breath, to force air into his lungs.
A breath came. Another. He closed his hands around the hilts of his sabers and tried to rise. Before he could regain his feet, Dolgan's huge hands closed over his shoulders, pinning his arms. The slaad lifted him bodily toward his fanged, open mouth. Riven stared into the tooth-lined opening.
Thinking quickly, he brought his knees to his chest, kicked out, and drove his feet into the slaad's throat. The blow would have crushed a human's windpipe but only caused Dolgan to gag, cough, and drop Riven.
Riven hit the floor in a crouch and slashed the slaad's gut with both sabers. The blades opened two gashes in the creature's midsection. Dolgan hissed with pain and lurched backward. His regenerative flesh was already closing the wounds.
Riven whirled a half-circle to face Azriim. The slaad bounded forward and let fly with a flurry of claw strikes. Parrying wildly, Riven gave ground, countering where he could. The slaad pressed, caught Riven in the chest with a claw, then a shoulder, and nicked his throat. Riven finally managed a more aggressive counterattack. He ducked beneath a claw strike and drove his saber half its length into Azriim's chest.
The slaad expectorated a spray of blood. Before Riven could finish him, Azriim bounded backward, hissing with pain as the saber withdrew from his flesh. Riven pursued but Azriim leaped upward and the leap never ended. The slaad went airborne, hovering near the ceiling, spattering the floor with his blood. Riven's slash hit only air.
Like Dolgan, Azriim's wounds, too, were closing before Riven's eyes.
Riven knew his situation was dire. The slaadi were faster than before, stronger, and they regenerated wounds that should have killed them. Riven was breathing hard and bleeding from a handful of painful wounds.
'You see it now, don't you?' Azriim taunted. 'This isn't your temple. You're in your tomb.'
Riven donned his sneer and answered, 'What I see is you and your boy unable to close the deal.' He put his fingers to the gashes on his face and they came away bloody. He looked at them, spat on the floor. 'And if this is the best you have, neither of you are walking out of this room.'
Azriim grinned. 'I always liked you. It's unfortunate that I have to kill you,'
Dolgan roared a challenge.
Riven resolved to take at least one of the bastards with him before he died. He readied himself….
The darkness on the far end of the room behind Azriim deepened and Riven could not contain a grin.
'It's about godsdamned time,' he said.
Cale had finally arrived.
Answering Dolgan's roar with a shout of his own, Riven charged the slaad.
Cale, Magadon, and Jak materialized in a large chamber in the tower they had seen through the leech, near a
