Slanya didn’t really know. When her spellscar flared to life, she simply understood how Beaugrat’s own spellscar workedand how to stop it from working.
The big man stumbled, weakened and in shock. He fell to his knees, his plate armor ringing against the tile floor.
Slanya wasted no time. The fragments of her reality made physical combat difficult and quick movements nauseating. Her staff came down hard on his head, and Beaugrat collapsed to the floor in a heap of metal and flesh.
Slanya glanced around. Tyrangal and the genasi guard fought vigorously, each unable to do serious harm to the other. Tyrangal was clearly the more powerful wizard, but the genasi’s shield made her invulnerable to attacks. On the opposite side of the room, Kaylinn and two others from the monastery had reached Duvan. They were examining him, and as much as she wanted to go to Duvan, her skills were needed elsewhere for the moment.
Can I do it again? Slanya wondered. Turning, she reached out with her ability and touched the genasi wizard fighting to a near stalemate with Tyrangal. Yes. In moments, Slanya understood the source and nature of the guard’s protective shield. She saw how the shield ability worked.
Different shards of reality vied for the attention of Slanya’s mind. She could not hold everything together, and part of her knew that if she didn’t stop using her spellscar ability shortly, her mind would unhinge completely from the physical world around her.
She wanted to try one more thing first. Whether it was worth the risk to herself, she never considered. Watching as though from farther and farther away, Slanya tried to reverse the process. She used her spellscar ability and tried to amplify the guard’s shield.
And she saw the shield double in diameter, then triple. Before her fragmenting eyes, Slanya watched as the shield grew so large that it soon encompassed Tyrangal as well. The genasi’s eyes went wide in astonishment.
Astonishment turned to fear as the full power of Tyrangal’s spells descended upon her. Cast from inside the bubble, Tyrangal’s flames incinerated the genasi guard.
The guard’s aquamarine skin blackened, charred, and blistered. In seconds, the genasi was reduced to soot hovering in the space where a fully alive being had been. The shield vanished, and the genasi’s remains drifted in the air like dust.
Turning slowly, Slanya’s mind sparkling like a constellation of independent stars, she became aware that Kaylinn was yelling something from where she stood over Duvan’s limp body. As Slanya’s spellscar waned in successive pulses, she tried to focus, tried to reintegrate herself. It seemed to take forever, but eventually she heard what Kaylinn was yelling.
“He’s dead!” Kaylinn said. “Duvan is dead.”
Stunned and enraged, Slanya screamed, “No!” But she could barely hear herself.
Beaugrat lay slumped at Slanya’s feet, completely helpless. Anger rose up in her. Duvan was dead, and it was this man’s fault. Duvan did not deserve to be dead. Duvan had saved her life several times. He was her friend.
As if watching herself from far away, from different vantage points simultaneously, Slanya reached down and took hold of Beaugrat’s bruised head. She crooked his jaw into the fold of her right elbow and made sure her grip would not slip.
Anger welled up inside her. She clenched her jaw and with all her strength, jerked Beaugrat’s head in a rapid, wrenching twist. The snap of his spine made a satisfying crunch, and she knew he was dead.
Part of her knew she shouldn’t want revenge. She had been taught that revenge accomplished nothing. Part of her knew she’d done this before, a long time ago as a little girl. But that time it had accomplished something. That time, revenge had changed her life.
That wasn’t revenge, she realized. That was escape. Survival.
Here, too, killing Beaugrat was survival. The man had proven that he would keep coming back. His continued existence was a danger to Duvan. Well, not anymore.
Slanya stood, her reality fragmented. Queasy, her awareness floating out of her body, she collapsed next to her dead victim.
Duvan stood on a featureless planea flat gray landscape stretching as far as he could see. The sky overhead was a lighter shade of gray. Ahead, there were no trees or rocks or hills or vegetation of any kind. He could no longer taste the intense iron tang of blood in the back of his throat, and the thick smell of blood had disappeared.
There were no other people on this vast plane, none close enough to see at least. However, he could hear something. Whispers and hissing bass voices were the only sound, an undercurrent of indistinguishable vocal droning that seemed to come from all around. Those whispers permeated his spirit, seeming to snap at his soul like dogs.
Where am I? he wondered.
Duvan examined himself. He was whole, his body sound except far a dry cut under his ribcage. No blood there, but the scar remained open. It didn’t hurt. In fact he felt nothing-no pain, no joy. Nothing. Only emptiness.
He felt like an animated huska hollowed-out marionette.
Turning, Duvan caught sight of a small, gray bump on the horizona tiny blip on the flat landscape of gray. He started walking toward it, his progress marked only by the shape’s fractional increase in size. But whatever it was, that dTH bump on the otherwise Sat plane, Duvan felt drawn to it.
Deep gray and black shadows drifted like tatters of wind-driven fog all around him as he walked. He felt no fear and no fatigue as he walked and walked. For hours he walked, and the dark bump on the horizon grew little by little. Days and tendays and even months seemed to pass as: he trudged forward. He had no sense of time in this place.
Fragments of memory flitted through his mind. He’d heard tell that souls passed to the Fugue Plane, Kelemvor’s home, to be judged. Perhaps that is where I am, he thought. But where is Kelemvor?
After more hours of walking, some of the whispered voices grew more distinct. One of them started talking to him, telling him that he didn’t have to go to the City of Judgment. Telling him that there were better options. The gods might not want him, but there were lords elsewhere who would accept him with open arms. He would start out at the bottom, but a soul like his could rise quickly. He would have power and eventual dominion over many others.
Duvan shook his head and marched on.
You should consider the offer, the whispers murmured. You are one of the Faithless. Your fate will otherwise be an eternity of boredom and monotony. The death god will entomb you in the walls of his city, forever.
Duvan walked on, considering. The Faithlesshe had heard of that legend. No god to speak for him meant spending eternity as part of the City of Judgment. Duvan felt detached from himself, but even so he knew that he did not want to end up that way.
But the alternative? An eternity in the thrall of the demons of the Abyss. Endless boredom or endless pain.
As if on cuealthough it could have been hours later since Duvan had completely lost track of timeanother voice came to him. “Duvan?” It was not the low hiss of the demons’ voices. This was a voice he recognized. “Duvan?”
He turned to see a shimmering archway shining with blinding light, so bright he couldn’t see anyone through it. “I am here,” he said.
“I have come to guide you back, if you will come,” the voice said. “You must decide quickly, for the spell does not last long.”
Somewhere in the distant, hollow recesses of his mind, Duvan remembered his lifethe struggles, the distrust, the pain.
There was also pleasure, he remembered. That had been part of his life. And contentment. Sadness, yes, but also humor and even joy, once or twice.
“I will come,” he told the voicea voice he recognized as belonging to the High Priestess Kaylinn of Slanya’s monastery. Slanya had not betrayed him after all. His friend Slanya had come to save him.
His friend. Duvan liked the thought of that.
