Quinn circled the throne, his long sword in his right hand. 'I am here to collect on your sins, Xeries,' he said, closing the distance.
Xeries's eyes were wide, and his breathing heavy, labored. He backed away, limping and crouched over. 'Do not come any closer. I'm warning you.' Despite the echo of his voice, he sounded panicked.
'Are you afraid, Xeries? Do I frighten you?' Quinn made a sudden jerking move forward, taunting his prey.
Xeries jolted back, startled.
'You are wise to be afraid.' Pulling the blade of his sword closer to his chest, Quinn threw his body forward into a tumbling roll.
Xeries scrambled backward, trying to get out of the way.
Quinn unfurled in front of him, coming out of his roll with a leap, flying at the arch magus with his long sword cocked over his head. The blade came down, and Xeries ducked, but not before Quinn cleaved another huge chunk of the hump from his back.
The lord of the Obsidian Ridge let out a second painful wail as another piece of his decrepit, deformed body fell to the floor.
The doors to throne room burst open, and a flood of Xeries's brutes charged in. They washed over the floor like a huge toxic wave, sloshing up and over the dais, covering the broken throne as if it were a rock caught in the surf.
Unable to take on so many in such a large space, Quinn was pushed back. Reaching the wall, he scaled the jagged stone in three huge bounds.
'I'll come for you again, Xeries.' And with that, he slipped into his shortcut, disappearing from view.
Arch Magus Xeries retreated into the private chamber off of his throne room. His wife lay motionless on the slab. Princess Mariko stood beside the coffins, examining his previous wives. She turned around when he entered.
'Looks like you've had a run-in with Quinn,' said the mimmio.
'Is that what you call that disease?' spat Xeries, his echoed voice dripping with venom.
He trailed blood and pus behind him as he limped. It tan down his back and off his legs, and he could feel the squish of each footstep as he went. Reaching a cabinet near the slab table, he retrieved an alabaster globe and quickly pulled the top off of it. '
Inside was a smooth opalescent salve, which he scooped up in his fingers and smeared on his back-the remnants of his hump. The burning throb that had spread across his flesh was cooled, and he could feel the skin on his back tighten as it knitted back together.
His hunched-over frame would forever be scared from the wounds he had taken, but at least that madman had not managed to kill him.
Returning the globe to its place, Xeries snapped his fingers. 'Come to me, my pets,' he said.
A silvery portal opened in the wall, next to the coffins of his discarded wives, and through it stepped his most trusted minions. These were his assassins, the smartest, most deadly of all his creations. Over the last hundred years, he had created only a half a dozen. One he had sent to its death as a message to King Korox. The other five now stood before him.
Smaller than his regular soldiers, they would be able to fit into the tight spaces this man was using to travel through the citadel.
'Find the man called Quinn. Kill him and return here with his remains.'
Chapter Thirty-Two
He saw them coming.
These beasts were unlike the others he had fought. They were cunning. They had more patience, and they worked together, watching every direction as they moved through the cracks in the walls of the Obsidian Ridge.
Quinn clung to the ceiling of a wide passage, completely hidden against the pitch black rock. Xeries's creatures worked their way past, scrutinizing everything, leaving no nook unsearched. They were hunters, killers sent out to find Quinn and destroy him.
At the end of the passage, all five of the creatures split up, each going their own direction. Quinn picked one and followed, silently stalking the beast from above. The creature's deep black skin made it hard to see in the obsidian corridors. Its soft, padded feet and smooth gait made it hard to hear against the constant humming noise of the citadel. But neither of these things hindered Quinn in his pursuit.
Had Xeries's hunter not been an adversary, Quinn might have admired its stealth and dedication to its work. He might have tried to study its instincts and see if it had something to teach him about their shared craft of killing. But it was an adversary, and now it needed to die.
Drawing closer, he came down the wall, still concealed in the darkness, silent as a tomb strider. The beast did not see him. It did not hear him.
Lifting a shard of broken stone from the floor, Quinn slipped it underneath the creature's neck and jammed it through the bottom of its throat. The beast scrambled sideways, pawing at its face. It tried to hiss at Quinn, but its mouth was pinned closed.
'Let me help you with that.' With a slash, Quinn cut the creature’s face from its head.
The beast shook, thrashing violently back and forth across the corridor, bashing its head against the walls. It could not see. It could not scream-just the way Quinn wanted.
'Time to go to work,' he said, then he lit upon the creature with both hands.
+++++
Xeries watched the chase through the eyes of his assassins. These minions were not dependent on him. They could search for the disease that tan through the halls of his home without him controlling their every move. It was a luxury he thoroughly enjoyed. They would seek out this Quinn, and he would watch as they tore him to shreds.
The youngest and smartest of the group led them all as they descended into the bowels of the citadel. At a crossroads, they split up, each going their separate ways. There were many places to hide, and his assassins had to check them all.
The tubes and passages that ran through the walls were remnants from a day when the Obsidian Ridge had been an active volcano. Xeries had chosen this mountain as his home many hundreds of years ago, when he was still with his third wife.
They had been far from Faerun then. So far east, many people would not have believed it was still on the same plane. A place where the earth raged day and night. Red-hot lava shot into the sky, rocking the ocean with earthquakes. The molten rock landed in huge clumps, making jagged mounds as far as the eye could see. It was really quite beautiful, the reds, oranges, and yellows spat from the mouths of the angry volcanoes, juxtaposed on the deepest black of the mountains themselves.
His third wife had so admired this mountain that Xeries couldn't bear to leave without giving it to her as a gift. For three days and three nights he labored to devise a spell that would tear the volcano from the ground. It had worked quite well, and his wife had been very impressed.
It took several months for the stone to cool sufficiently for them to be able to finally go inside. Seeing his minions scurry through the lava tubes deep in the bowels of the citadel reminded him of that time. He and his third wife would take strolls through the tubes often, reminiscing about the places they had traveled and the things they had seen.
When his third wife had become no longer of use to him, he stopped going down to the tubes. His fourth and fifth wives did not care for them, and so he all but forgot they were there. He doubted any of his wives since then had ever even seen them.
A stabbing pain shot through the neck of one of his assassins, and his reminiscing came to an end. His minion was struggling, and for some reason it couldn't get its mouth open. There was something in the lava tube with
