For a long time, Blaymore's mind floated along the nonexistent line between the deepest sleep and total unconsciousness. Occasionally he drifted upward to the realm of dreams, but he never remained there long enough to actually HAVE one. All he saw were quick flashes of sights and sounds... Faces and voices... fighting.... weapons clashing....

....and fear. It was the fear that drove him back down into the depths, but
he could never hold on to his thoughts long enough to see just what it was that he was afraid of. He couldn't remember what had brought him to this odd state of being, and every time he tried, the memories slipped through his grasp like water. Then he slipped away along with them... his thoughts scattering like a handful of sand tossed into a whirlwind.

And a few moments (minutes? Days?) later it would begin again, with flashes of thoughts and snippets of indecipherable memories trying to resolve themselves into a proper dream. That was as far as he got for a long while... Struggling to merely be asleep. Once, he actually thought he felt something. His feet. They hurt. And then it was gone. Another time, he felt a wave of thick, syrupy dizziness engulf him, as if he were drunk or drugged. That too, faded quickly as he sank back down into darkness. Eventually, however, he managed a foothold... something snagged... Something held... And then he was dreaming. And once firmly established in dream, it was only a short climb to the waking world. Like a blanket slowly being pulled away, unconsciousness retreated and awareness returned. Memory came with it.

What had happened?

Oh yes... THAT.

The fact that he was still alive meant that he was obviously a prisoner somewhere. He assumed this even before the feeling had fully returned to his body... before he could feel the table beneath him and the straps that tied him to it. Before he could even HEAR anything, he surmised that he was being watched. He instantly caught his breath and forced it back into the same slow rhythm that it had before he awoke. Perhaps it was a wasted effort.... Perhaps they already knew he was awake. But perhaps not. Then, in the next half-instant, the feeling returned to his body. There was pain... lots of it.

Blaymore took an inventory.

He remembered every injury he had obtained in the various battles and travails it took to reach the island... And matched them up with the dozens of aches and wounds that now assailed him...looking for whatever didn't match, and thus getting a good idea of what, if anything, had been done to him while he was asleep. Not much was out of place. He had likely been collected from the floor of Jallan's lab and dumped immediately onto a table somewhere.

They HAD paused long enough to divest him of his clothing, as he couldn't feel a single stitch of it anywhere on his body. There was something on his neck, however. Something hard. Metal.

A collar.

Blaymore fought the flinch of anger and disgust before it could make his consciousness known. They had collared him. Like the other slaves. Whether the collars served some useful purpose or where merely symbolic remained to be seen, but he did remember that the guard's collars had been enchanted. For WHAT, he never bothered to find out. Perhaps he should have. Whatever it did, the fact that there was one around his neck did not bode well.

He returned his concentration to his wounds, noticing that some of them didn't hurt as much as they should have... While others hurt a lot more. Conclusion: someone had examined his wounds... thoroughly... and had begun treating them. The shrapnel from the chaff-bursts had been removed. The more serious cuts from the wire-net had been stitched. The burns from the lightning-trap were packed in gauze...

The conclusion was confirmed further by the sudden touch of something on his wounded shoulder. Something moist....in a gentle rubbing motion. It hurt.... burned like the salves that healers used. Blaymore didn't flinch. He kept his breathing steady. He waited. He listened. He thought. He only heard the breath of one person in the room, other than his own. The healer was alone. That may... or may not... be a stroke of luck that Blaymore could use. If there had been stitching and minor surgery performed, then there would be knives present. If he could get hold of one, then he could be free of the restraints in less than a second. After that.... it all depended on whether the room was being monitored, how close the guards were... and what manner of enchantments were contained in the collar he wore.

It ALSO depended on just where he was. That, he could not know until he opened his eyes.

Blaymore's right eyelid eased open just a sliver... barely enough to see out of. Everything was blurry, but he saw enough to know that the healer was a woman... a female slave wearing a collar similar to the ones he had already seen. Hers was a different color, however. Rank? Or perhaps the color was the common marking of a house or medical slave. The woman's attention was focused on his arm, where she was bandaging his wounds. Blaymore opened his other eye. Without moving his head or widening his eyes beyond the merest slits, he took in as much as he could about the room. The walls were solid metal, with no visible door. The door was either in the wall behind him where he couldn't see it, or the entrance/exit of the room required some use of magic. Given the amount of magic he'd encountered so far, the second possibility was very likely. It was also very likely that he wouldn't be able to phase through the walls
once he got off of the table.

But Blaymore had no doubt that he would find a way out. He always did. The first thing he would try would be the floor... most mages and dungeon-keepers spent all of their energies securing walls and doors, while leaving the floors and ceilings wide open to all manner of infiltration. If that didn't work, then he would have to force the healer-woman to provide him with an exit. She had to have gotten in here somehow.

The woman herself was quite attractive... shapely in the way that most men enjoyed. She actually bore a slight resemblance to Zade, a fact that gave Blaymore a half-instant's pause to ensure that he wasn't hallucinating. He wasn't. She was real... but unfortunately she didn't have any usable weapons with her. She obviously wasn't the one who had stitched him, for the only equipment she had with her were a metal tray, a few small bottles of medicinal salves, and a large roll of bandages.

Blaymore stifled a smile. They had sent her in her with no weapons... but what she had was more than enough. The bottles were glass. Glass could be broken, and even the smallest shards could be deadly when moving at Blaymore's speed. Then there were her clothes. She wasn't wearing much, but the short wrap that hugged her hips was secured with a metal clasp...

Metal clasp. They may as well have strapped a sword to his hand.

Neither the jars nor the clasp were within reach, but the woman was working her way down his right arm... and her hip would be dangerously close to his fingers in just a few minutes.

Blaymore closed his eyes and waited. He felt the sting of the medicine as she smeared it on his upper arm. Felt the tightness of the bandages as she applied them. She repeated the process for another wound near his elbow... then moved down toward his wrist- Blaymore's eyes popped open. His hand... bound at the wrist with a strap of sturdy leather... was more than free enough to reach for the metal clasp mere inches away. And so he did. Faster than the blink of an eye, his fingers lashed out and-

zzZZZ-THAAZZZZZZzz

The collar around his neck unleashed a surge of pain down his spinal column and out to his extremities, burning along his nerve endings like lightning. Every muscle in his body began to cramp and spasm out of
control-

"AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHH!"

The pain ended in a dull, fading agony that quickly gave way to a throbbing numbness throughout his entire body. Blaymore opened his eyes again, realizing that the blast had knocked him
unconscious for a moment.

The nurse-slave had backed away from him, and was clutching her wrap around herself... Blaymore had succeeded in tearing the clasp away, but had dropped it during the spasms. It was on the floor, out of reach... and the woman's clothes were dangerously close to falling off of her hips. Blaymore turned his head... slowly... to face her. He frowned.

"Who are you?" he said sternly, as if SHE were the one tied to a table and
HE were walking around free. "And how do I get this collar off?"

Ashieka hesitated, "I am Ashieka, a slave of House Ellis. You've got to move like an old man. Don't you move any faster. If you move any faster, that collar's going to fry you. Only massa Ellis can remove your collar. It's a heavy one made for very dangerous men." Ashieka cupped Michael's chin with her hand and looked into his eyes. Her face was unique, exotic and flawless. Her eyes were very rich and dark. "Just relax. You've got wounds that need attending to. Don't even try to think fast; just take it easy. Don't think about speed and don't think about magic. If you use any kind of magic, or try to speed yourself up even if you don't move, that collar's going to cook you again, and I don't know how many jolts like that a man can survive."

Blaymore wasn't in the mood to test the accuracy of the woman's words. His extremities were still numb from his first encounter with the collar's magic. It appeared that it was set up to prevent him from doing everything except lay here like a helpless child. Blaymore was certain he could survive another few blasts,... but the energy would send him into spasms... keeping him from doing anything useful whether he survived or not.

"You're a slave," said Blaymore. "But you don't have to be. All you have to do is remove this collar. There must be a way... something you've heard or seen. Don't be afraid to try it. Free me, and I'll free us both. I'll kill Ellis and Jallan, and then free every slave on this island."

For a few moments, Ashieka said nothing. She placed her abdomen against the table to keep her wrap mostly closed as she worked. Soon she began changing the dressings on Michael's shoulder opposite her. She had to lean over him to do it, and this brought her lips closer to his face and ear. Her breath whispered across his eyes. "Freedom? Freedom to do what? If I could free you, which I can't, how do I know you would not kill more people I know like you killed Sergeant Warrant and his men? Did you even ask us what our lives were like here? Do you even know what freedom is for people who can't outrun the overseer, or the constable or the priest or the Baron and his knights and soldiers? We have power on this island because there are almost no whites here. It is as good a place for a slave as you will find in all the kingdom. Where have you found freedom, and what kind of freedom have you got? Can you settle down? Where you live do the priests and constables' men greet you by name and let you be?"

Blaymore had no delusions that the healer-woman was going to set him free now. He had killed people she knew, and he was lucky she wasn't torturing him now that she had the opportunity. But her words were very refined and intelligent for a slave. Perhaps he could learn something from her... and appeal to whatever intelligence she was allowed to have... while scanning the room for further possibilities of escape.

"You speak of freedom the way all slaves do: as something you know nothing of. What I can and cannot do are results of my own choices... not the choices of those who claim ownership of me," said Blaymore. "If I am wanted by the men of my city, then it is because of how I chose to apply that freedom that you fear. As for your friends, those men died because they were trying to kill me. And because they stood between me and the evil I came here to destroy. If they did so of their own free will... or out of cowardice... then they deserved what they got. If they protect Ellis because they had no choice, then their deaths were unfortunate... but necessary. Their deaths will be balanced by the good of Ellis' end."


Ashieka spoke in a whisper as she worked. Her work and the heated conversation distracted her from the fact that her wrap was gradually opening up to become far more revealing of her extravagant yet athletic figure than it's designer had intended.

"I can make any choice you can. The difference is the consequences. The more freedom you have the more things you can do without facing consequences you don't like. There are a whole lot of things that will get most slaves punished. We are at the bottom, just up from us are white wives, then poor white men, gentlemen, noblemen and kings, but even the king is not completely free to do as he wishes. The king has no piece of paper that says he owns massa Ellis, but massa grovels before him like a slave, and he can order massa Ellis around just like Grady can order a field hand."

"Freedom IS consequences," said Blaymore. "Men here have the freedom to own and torture other human beings for profit. Because of that, I am here to kill them. If I fail, then others will come after me. And others will come after THEM. And more still after THEM. The Ellis clan has lived in YOUR kind of freedom... free from the consequences their evil... for too long. That time has ended now."

"You are a powerful man, so powerful you might actually be able to end had gone to the palace of the king with your blade I would know you were a man of high ideals trying to conquer slavery, but instead you came to isle Ellis."

There was a barely-audible click from one of the walls. Blaymore glanced in that directions, but Ashieka didn't appear to have heard it. But when she spoke again, her voice had become a hissing whisper, "You cannot dismantle slavery from here, sir. All you can do here is get back at those who wronged you. Did the men you killed die to end slavery; or did they die because they stood between you and your vengeance?"

"Fine," Blaymore rolled his eyes and sighed. "Remain what you are, while you can. Soon you won't have the OPTION of being a slave. Not for Ellis. Possibly not for anyone."

This one was a lost cause. It would be very disturbing if ALL the slaves were in such a state... it would mean possibly having to kill a great many of them, as they would undoubtedly throw themselves in front of Ellis in an effort to prevent their own liberation.

But the slave-nurse HAD been right about one thing. Blaymore would spare who he could, but he was not foolish enough to believe he had come here to free them. He was here for revenge. He was here to practice the trade that he had learned and practiced for years: the killing of men. The freedom of Ellis' slaves would be a by-product they would have to accept whether they wanted it or not.

A metallic door opened at that moment disgorging a handsome, twenty-something sandy blonde-haired gentleman with immaculate grooming. He was of medium height and build and dressed in black silk breeches and a deep purple tunic, its sleeves embroidered with golden thread. As he looked down at Michael, the light from the ward field above caught his amber eyes making them look unsettlingly like the yellow eyes of a cat. Nathaniel Ellis strode smoothly and unpretentiously into the room with an air of unshakable confidence as though he owned everything he currently beheld, and indeed he did. The door closed silently behind him, blending back into the seamless wall.

"Welcome home, Michael. I see you have been having a heated discussion with your caretaker."

"Ellis," Blaymore sneered. He sneered at the man, and he sneered at the fact that Ellis had dared address him by his former name. "I was merely passing the time until I got the opportunity to fulfill my purpose for coming. That time draws close, I think."

"I am not sure it was advisable for you to return, but I do believe you have one of the finest reasons for vengeance imaginable. However I regret to inform you that fate has cheated you out of at least half your prize, such a pity," Nathaniel shook his head.

"Don't pity me," said Blaymore. "Pity your next of kin. Pity everyone else on this island who bares the Ellis name."

"I am afraid I have no next of kin. That is what I was referring to. You see my half brother Percival was killed by Bethsaida the night you left. He and his thugs broke into the lab for some corn liquor. Although I vainly attempted to protect it, they pushed me aside and made the mistake of stealing the very powerful batch I had distilled for laboratory use. A while after they returned to their bacchanal at Percival's cabin, you might say they forfeited the consciousness to prevent their own deaths. I am sure Bethsaida felt they richly deserved the fate she dealt them," Nathaniel raised an eyebrow.

"A little later that night my half sisters Belinda and Elysia were killed, and the manner in which they were killed struck at the sanity of many more of my kin." The events of that night afflicted each with a different malady. My father's wife Charlotte developed hideous migraines and eventually killed herself with an overdose of the opium she used to control the pain. My half-sister Lucinda became subject to anxiety attacks during which she ran as if the hounds of hell were chasing her. One afternoon she ran straight off a cliff. David was never right after that night. He bled to death of self-inflicted wounds as a teenager. My father lived to see them all die, but he hardly slept after the night he lost his baby daughter, and he was as disagreeable a man as you can imagine. Hawthorne was the only Ellis who did not witness the events that eventually robbed my father and his family of their lives. It fell to Hawthorne and I to manage the estate."

Blaymore remembered all the names. And he remembered the cruelty that went along with them. He had no knowledge of the events Ellis was speaking of, but if they involved the death of Ellises then it was something he should be celebrating.

"The poor, poor Ellis clan," he said sarcastically. "Perhaps before you join them, you can take me to their graves so that I can spit on them. Or better yet... hold a parade in honor of their murderers. What happened... some of your beloved slaves weren't as weak and frightened by you as you thought?"

"I could tell you more about that night, but it is hardly a conversation if I do all the talking. I appreciated your sparing a few of my guards. They are good men and they assured me that you were highly skilled at arms and possessed of magical items and magical talent. Jallan also observed you must have the ability to pick locks. You have been a very busy man since you left us. What became of you after you left the farm?" Blaymore chuckled. It was a harsh, humorless laugh. "A conversation?"

Blaymore raised his head and sat up as much as his bonds would allow. It wasn't much. "You speak as if you know me. You don't. You may have known what was... but that is no more. You want conversation? Then listen to me now, Ellis. Take the advice of one who has run in and out of petty dungeons like yours more times than you have seen sunrise: Your best course of action is to kill me right now, while you THINK you can. While I live, I will stop at nothing except the complete dismemberment of everything you are. Everything you have will be dust... dust smeared with your blood and the blood of anyone foolish enough to protect you."

Blaymore chuckled again.

"Actually you would be dead now save for the intervention of Alchemist Jallan. He interposed himself between you and a syringe full of essence of hemlock I was about to inject you with. Evidently, next to his nerve specific alcohol, he believes you to be his life's greatest achievement. I have reluctantly given him leave to study you for a few weeks. You are, however, to be left in working order. I do not allow him the gratuitous torture that my father did. It is simply not efficient to destroy a unique and valuable individual trying to figure out what makes him tick. What surgery he will be allowed to perform, will be done under anesthesia."

"...and you want conversation. Hmph."

"Indeed, you have been away for many years; I wish to catch up with you. Although I did not know you well, I was charged with carrying out some of Jallan's dubious orders concerning his initial study of you. However, I do believe Percival was the genius who came up with the idea of torturing your mother in front of you to touch off a speeded episode. It is Such a pity you didn't kill us all then. It would have been a simple matter, and then you would have spared your sisters the all-night free-for-all that resulted in Selie's death. It is a twist of irony that a man as speedy as you would return only after eighty percent of the people he wished revenge against were already dead," Nathaniel chuckled.

The mention of Blaymore's second sister sent a twinge down Blaymore's back, which in turn, elicited a tingle of pain from the collar around his neck. Nathaniel was trying to get to him. And he was off to a more than fair start already. The slavemaster was right... Blaymore's vengeance was over a decade too late. But why? Why hadn't he come back before?

"I believe the reason you are such a Johnny-come-lately is simple. It is the same reason you came here by yourself rather than accompanied by a teaming army of loyal followers. It is the same reason that I bow and scrape before King Frederich II rather than King Michael the swift. It is the reason why I am standing here while you are strapped to a table. As long as you let your fears control you, Michael, I am your master and you will obey me."

"Obey?" said Blaymore. "I will only honor one command from your lips... And that will be when you beg me to kill you after I have slowly-"

Suddenly the door opened and Alchemist Jallan entered flanked by an intelligent looking twelve-year-old slave boy pushing a gurney. Blaymore's face became a stone carving of anger. Even without his illusion magic, Blaymore's eyes flashed with rage... almost taking on a glow of their own.

"Alchemist," he spat, barely able to form words through the tightly
clenched jaw.

"IT'S PARTAE TIME!" Jallan squealed brandishing a syringe. Nathaniel rolled his eyes, "Good morning Alchemist Jallan I see you have remembered we now use anesthesia, very good. There is a shipment of slaves that Michael temporarily freed that I have had our physicians examining. I do believe they will be promising additions to our breeding program. In any case I have business to attend to for most of the day. I will check with you on your results this evening. Nathaniel Ellis nodded to his alchemist and accompanied Ashieka out the door, leaving Jallan and the slave boy alone with the helpless Blaymore.

"You're still a drunken joke of a man.... Still unable to duplicate your own greatest success. And now you serve your own apprentice. How proud you must be."

"Inheritance is a wonderful thing!" Jallan rubbed the thumb and fingers of his free hand together as if asking for money as he unceremoniously stuck the syringe into Michael's arms and legs in various places. A numbing heat spread out from each prick, immobilizing the nearby muscles. Jallan kissed Michael's big toe. "I'd be serving you if you had had the brains to come back before we had a little security set up, but there's no accounting for stupidity, aye Rem? There, that ought to hold him for a while."

Jallan began undoing Blaymore's bonds in preparation for transferring him to the gurney. Blaymore tried to move... But found his muscles unresponsive. He couldn't budge, and after another second he could barely feel his limbs at all. Jallan and his assistant turned Michael over as they moved him onto the wheeled hospital bed and Jallan emptied another syringe into a vein in Michael's arm.

Blaymore couldn't feel the prick of the needle, but he did feel the sensation that followed... Like molasses flowing in his veins.

"I've got good news and baaad news. Which do you want to hear first?"

"What are you doing to me..." Blaymore's words were a mere heartbeat away from being slurred. He didn't feel dizzy, or drugged; he just felt... slow...

"The good news is I deactivated the, reacting to magic on your person, function of your collar because some of the reagents and instruments I'll be using on you are magical, so you can speed all you want as long as you don't make any swift movements. The bad news is I just injected you with a slow potion, HAHAHA! And more good news is I am using anesthesia as his profoundly stuffy majesty commanded... but the baaad news is, he didn't say *what* I had to use as anesthesia." Alchemist Jallan emptied a third syringe into Michael's spine just below the base of his skull as he screeched an impromptu melody:

"YOU'RE GONNA BE HIIIIGH, SOOO HIIIIGH! YOU'RE GONNA REACH OUT AND HEAR THE
MULTICOLORED SKYYY! YOU'RE GONNA TOUCH THE CHIRPING OF THE BIRDS, AND
YOU'RE GONNA SEE THE SMELL OF THEIR MULTICOLORED TURDS!"

NOW the dizziness began. It hit him all at once: a thick blanket of nausea. He blinked a few times... each blink seemed to last an hour, with the darkness in between filled with rolling, bouncing and swaying... ...and they hadn't even started to move him yet.

Jallan hopped up onto the gurney next to Michael and called on his assistant to push the wheeled bed. "Hurry, I've promised myself a drink when we're done here. To the operating theatre Rem, mush! mush!"

The slave wheeled Blaymore and Jallan out into the alchemist's laboratory and aimed them in the general direction of one of the rooms lining the hall. Blaymore didn't know exactly what the alchemist had in mind for him there, but he knew that he must not let it happen. Jallan had drugged him... robbed him of both speed and motion... but there was still a way out. He could speed up his metabolism... force his body to process whatever concoctions Jallan had injected him with within minutes... maybe even seconds.

The alchemist thought him helpless, but that would change... All he had to do was co- all he had do to... concentra- to do... think.... all he had....

"...huh?" Blaymore grunted aloud. More of Jallan's drugs had reached his brain. They were clouding his mind... making it harder to... harder... to... "what?"

He couldn't concentrate. Trying to focus his mind was like... like something he couldn't think of at the moment. Something hard. Yeah, that was it... something hard. "...what is happening," he slurred at the several pairs of Jallans looking down at him.

"Can't... can't think... Uhhgh... help...me..."

---

For once, there was no pain. For once in a long and miserable while, there was no anger. No anguish. No hate. No rage.

There were no memories. No nightmares of things that should never have happened.... but had happened anyway. No strain of trying to repress those memories... of pretending that none of it had been real, or that it had happened to someone else. No lies told to herself so that she could live some twisted version of an ordinary life. There was no life. There was only quiet. Peace. Not happiness... not joy... just emptiness. Nothingness.

That was good enough.

Yes, she would settle for nothing. Nothing at all.

But then, it happened. A gentle stirring... a wave of tiny embers crawling through a brain that had already fired its final thoughts. A twitch. A flash... not light, but some other sensation. Which sense was it? Her brain hadn't quite sorted itself out enough to tell. She was hearing colors... and feeling sounds... smelling-

Nothing. Gone.

Just a glitch... a momentary tremor of a dying thing. Ignore it-

It came again. It was a sound. A word. A voice. A name.

"Bethsaida."

The name sent a shock through Zade's mind... a miniature lightning bolt that burned its way through the dying connections, re-establishing them along one, single path. The bolt had come from nowhere, and to nothing it returned. But it left behind a memory. Like breath blown across an ember, it had brought forth a brief flare of recognition...

Selie?

Oblivion did not answer her. It didn't have to. Zade knew what she had heard, she just didn't know what it meant. Was she going to see her sister again? And her mother?

No. They wouldn't be where SHE was going. Zade had no delusions about her life. She had had the energy for such things once, but not now. She was not going to see them again. But maybe they could see her. And maybe one of them had called out. And maybe they could hear her...

Selie... I'm sorry... I couldn't stop them. I should have let them kill us, but I didn't... I'm sorry...

Zade expected no answer, for what would Hell be if she could talk to whoever she wanted and have them talk back? She expected nothing... but that wasn't what she got.

"Michael," Selie's voice whispered directly into her soul, bypassing her ears and her mind altogether. "He's hurting..."

Selie, can you hear me? Can you hear? Are you listening? I'm-

"He needs you."

Selie?

"Go to him. Help him...."

Something about the last words marked them as final... made it obvious that there would be nothing else to follow.

Selie? Please?

Zade squirmed in her own personal darkness. Maybe this was Hell after all. Selie hadn't heard her. All she did was talk... and the things she said. Michael was hurting. Michael NEVER hurt. Michael ran away from hurt. He had even given up his name when it became too painful to carry around. Michael needed her? Michael never needed anyone. And even if he did, what business of it was HERS. What could SHE do about it... she was dead.

But then a sinking feeling eased into her stomach as she thought:

Dead people don't think.

Nor did they have sinking feelings in their stomachs.

She was still alive. And worse than that, she was awake. Almost awake. Awake enough to wonder if she was awake.

That meant the was going to have to start killing people again. Yes... if she could not have the peace of oblivion or damnation, then she would have revenge. Oh yes, she could feel the rage now...

It felt.... gooooooood. Like cold water. Like a hot meal. Hate. Hate was her friend. It HAD to be, because it had always been there. Even when her own flesh and blood deserted her, HATE had stood by her side.

Welcome back, old friend. Is it time? Yes... I think it is...

The world came back to her not in a sudden rush, but in slow, maddeningly sluggish waves. One sense at a time.

Smell was first. Strong and musty. Animal smells. Dung... sweat... And something else. Something sharp and pungent, like her mother's medicines. And another smell... all over. Everywhere. Human, but not her own scent. Someone else. It was an old, sickly smell, familiar and NOT familiar at the same time. Who...?

While she puzzled that final, pervasive scent, her sense of hearing returned.

It started with a ringing buzz that was not a true sound at all, but rather the internal noise of her own brain struggling back to consciousness. The buzz faded, leaving shuffling footsteps nearby... beside her. And the drip, drip, slosh of a cloth being dipped into liquid, then wrung out. And breathing. Slow and ragged... almost labored. The rustle of cloth... a snipping sound... something moving. A pause... and then a grunt of curiosity.

Zade wondered when her sense of touch would return. It was next. She felt something odd beneath her... hard, but not completely solid. She felt an amazing variety of numbness all over her body. The numbness began to fade, and pain rushed in to replace it. Not all at once. It came in sudden spurts. First the dull aches of joints and muscles. Then the hard knots of bruises that went all the way to the bone. The the burning of open wounds. Followed by the tearing sensation of DEEP open wounds, and the pulling and tingling of her body as it repaired them. And finally, the blazing ball of agony that was her lower torso. If pain were fire, it felt as if she had swallowed the sun. It was bad.

But not as bad as she expected. She DID remember what happened. She DID realize that she should be dead. But she had felt worse pain than this. And, since she was still alive, it followed that she would probably feel worse again before she was done.

Next... sight. Zade's eyes opened. At first there was no difference. Everything was still black. Then the black faded to dark gray. Parts of the gray continued to fade to medium and finally light gray. Shapes appeared. The shapes sharpened; color and contrast began to seep back into the world.

She saw a man. She couldn't see his face, even though she was looking right at it. Too blurry. She was laying on a cot of some kind... a wicker and cloth contraption with a thin mattress of rags. The man stood over her, looking down. Not at her face. He hadn't seen her eyes open.

Zade was naked. Rags... filthy rags that reeked of various things she would rather not have against her skin... lay draped over her chest and thighs, placed so as to preserve her presumed modesty.

Above her was a simple thatched roof bearing several holes large enough to see the sky through. It was dark, but not completely. Just after sunset. The first stars had just began to show. Zade turned her attention to closer matters.

She was in a shack of some kind. Slave quarters? Perhaps. What little furniture she saw was either homemade, broken, or both.

Zade heard the distinctive bray of a donkey from somewhere outside.

Inside, the blurry man-shaped image became slightly clearer as it looked down at her. He was holding something in his hand... Something that, over the next few seconds, resolved itself into another rag... this one soaked with blood. The man turned to wring the rag out into a bucket, then soaked it in a chipped bowl resting on the table beside him. The bowl contained some kind of thin, aromatic fluid. He wrung the rag out again and then turned back to Zade.

That's when she saw his face. That's when his scent... Strong enough to be smelled even above the horrid stench of the rags and the fluid... Finally attached itself to the proper memory in her mind. She had seen this man before. Many times before... A long, long time ago. He was a fading relic of a previous life. A life when she was the slave Bethsaida, not the mercenary Zade. A life when HE was the brutal young overseer known as Chase.

He was older. He was much smaller... His once-athletic build atrophied by a decade of disuse. He had been an imposing figure before... But now he was frail. And sick. One side of his face and neck was covered with boils and weeping lesions that gnarled his features into something painful to behold... Yet it wasn't enough to hide him. It wasn't enough to keep her from remembering, for she had seen that face close up. It had hung mere inches from hers while he raped her that night... His scent had been like a blanket over her face. And she was smelling it again right now. It was him. There was no doubt. It was Chase.

Of all the people she expected to see... Of all the personal vengeance she expected to dole out before someone finally brought her down... HE was not one of them. But there he was.

Ohhhh, the gods were indeed smiling upon her this night!

Zade's reaction was as brutal as it was instantaneous.

"NRRRRAAAA-" Zade growled as she sat up and grabbed for the man's neck, intending to rip his throat out with her bare hands. Chase turned toward her, eyes wide with shock-

"NOO!" He gasped. "DON'T!"

Pain erupted from Zade's abdomen... a fountain of sharp, tearing agony that drained the strength right out of her. She fell back onto the filthy cot, squinting and growling against the sudden, animalistic need to escape into herself. The canine was still there... but it was just as weak as she was. Zade wanted to push her way through the pain and tear Chase into bloody chunks with her teeth, but she simply couldn't. She could do it in her mind, but her body would not follow.

As soon as she had fallen back, Chase's hands flew to her stomach-

"The STITCHES!" he cried. His voice was a cross between a whine and a rasp.... with more of the first and less of the second. The most sickening aspect of his voice was that, for a second, he actually sounded concerned. Zade felt him touch her... felt his filthy hands on her skin. She pulled away. "Stop moving! You'll pop the stitches-"

There was an agonizing pause while Chase prodded her exposed abdomen, with Zade too weak to do anything about it.

"-oh," said Chase. "Looks as though you don't need them any more. Still, it's not a good idea for you to be moving around just yet."

The pain in Zade's gut was subsiding... fading quicker than it should have for a human, but about normal for a werewolf. In a few minutes she would be able to sit up and kill this bastard. Just a few minutes...

"...how long?" Zade tried to growl. Her throat was dry and tight; her voice barely recognizable.

Chase looked at her. He turned his diseased face towards her and DARED look into her eyes. For a moment. Then his eyes quickly shifted away.

"It's almost n-night," he said.

"Same day?" Talking took supreme effort, as every syllable jostled the wound in her gut. But she felt her strength returning...

"Yes." Chase seemed to find something fascinating to look at in the vicinity of his toes... thus avoiding looking at Zade entirely. "I... I s-saw you. I was there in the town. I saw.... I saw it was you. After all these years, I-"

Chase swallowed nervously before continuing.

"-I couldn't let them take you. You were hurt, so I hid you in my wagon. Brought you here, to help you."

"Help me," Zade said doubtfully.

"I'm a healer, now," said Chase. Again, he glanced at her face. Again, he looked away quickly, as if seeing her face hurt him. "Sort of. A-A-After that night, after what I did, I... I couldn't- I went back to th-the family business."

Family business.

Slaves made a habit of NOT eavesdropping on overseers and their private conversations, but during her time at the Ellis house, Zade couldn't help but pick up small details of her masters' lives. She knew what Chase's family business was... what trade he had abandoned so that he could make a living torturing other human beings....

"A veterinarian," said Zade. "An animal doctor."

Chase nodded without looking at her.

"B-b-but e-everything works mostly the same way in people," he said. "Mostly. And besides, you weren't exactly... h-h-human... when I found you."

He had found the wolf. The animal had been too injured to move...probably even unconscious, bleeding to death in the street. So Chase had dragged it away without fear of getting his arm chewed off. How fortunate.

"-And I've worked on p-people before," said Chase, defending himself. "Sometimes wh-when the church's field healers were short-handed, they let me work on people."

"People? You mean slaves," Zade guessed.

"S-Slaves are people."

Zade felt a large knot of something twitch painfully in her abdomen. The healing was continuing. Soon...

"My gear?" she demanded... finally having enough strength TO demand.

"I took what I saw-" Chase pointed to a small stool near the corner. Her clothes and weapons were strewn across the floor around it. Her pack of equipment sat on the stool itself. "I think it's all there. I h-haven't had time to l-look. I've been t-treating you the whole time-"

"Why?" said Zade.

Chase blinked... confused.

"Assuming you DID help me... why did you bother?"

"I..." Chase looked at her stomach. "I should take these stitches out. Heh... I just put them in a few minutes ago. Spent hours trying to stop the bleeding. At first the wounds wouldn't close, but then... all of a sudden-"

"Answer the question," Zade sneered. She propped herself up onto her elbows. It didn't hurt. Oh, yes, this diseased fool was going to be dead VERY soon... "Why did you help me... why did you save me from the others? So you can have me all to yourself? So you can rape me without having to wait in line-"

Chase gasped and backed away, sputtering.

"No! No, I've never-"

"Oh, you DIDN'T rape me that night?" said Zade, forcing herself to sit up further. That DID hurt, but she did it anyway. "That wasn't you? I imagined that whole thing?"

"I-I-I-I-"

"You what?"

"B-Bethsaida, I've-"

"Oh, you remember my NAME!?! I should be flattered! No, really... I AM flattered. It's not often I get to kill people who actually know my real name..."

Zade wasn't quite upright when the pain became too much to continue. But it was enough. She reached out and grabbed the small knife from the table beside the cot. Chase was too far away to do what she REALLY wanted to do with it, so instead, she began slicing at the line of crude stitches running across her abdomen. The flesh beneath the stitches was whole again, and they served no purpose any longer. She cut each piece of thread and pulled them out of her flesh one at a time... flinching against the pain.

"I-"

"I'll do it myself, thank you," Zade spat, tearing out another piece of thread. "And if YOU had any sense, you'd be running. In about five minutes I'm going to be strong enough to get off of this cot. You don't want to be here when that happens."

"Bethsaida, I'm not that person you knew years ago!"

"Oh?" Zade paused in her self-surgery. "So who are you?"

"I've changed! I... I HELP people now!"

"So that just makes it alllll better, doesn't it? You're not an overseer any more... you're a veterinarian. So I can just FORGET that that night EVER happened. Pretend that all those YEARS never happened!"

"No, please," said Chase. "I didn't mean-"

"Didn't mean WHAT? Didn't mean to RAPE me? What... was it an ACCIDENT? You just walked into the room, tripped over your pants and FELL on top of me! Is THAT it!?"

Chase hid his face in his hands.

"I'm so sorry,..." he wheezed between gasping sobs. "Bethsaida, I'm so so, sorry-"

"SORRY!!?"

Zade swung her legs off of the cot and hopped down to the floor. Her legs gave way under her weight, but she held herself steady. Half of the stitches still crisscrossed her stomach, but now the surgical knife was clutched with a tighter grip... intended for a different purpose. The towels covering her fell away, and she stood naked in the animal-healer's shack. She didn't care. She was just waiting... waiting until she could walk... just a little while longer...

"SORRY!? Did you just say you were SORRY!!?"

"Yes," said Chase. "Don't you understand... what I did,... it HAUNTS me! I never sleep... I can't close my eyes without seeing it... seeing your face. Seeing the pain in your eyes! The GUILT EATS at me like... like a disease! A pestilence in my heart! I was never the same man after that night, and I never WILL be!"

"Then why didn't you do the world a favor and KILL YOURSELF! Save ME the trouble!"

"I DID!" Chase shouted. "I TRIED! MORE THAN ONCE!"

"Not even man enough to do THAT right, eh?"

"After what I did to you... to all those others... I'm not fit to LIVE! Don't you think I know that! But... but who am I to call an end to my own suffering? I'm not even worthy of death by my own hands! I have to make amends... and when I saw you today, I knew that the gods had sent you to me!"

"That's funny," said Zade, finally letting go of the cot and standing on her own. "-I was thinking the exact same thing."

"You see!" said Chase. "You understand! What I did to you was wrong, but now I've been given a chance!"

Chase made a movement. Zade's instincts told her it was an attack... but she was wrong. She watched the former overseer, incredulous at what she was seeing.

Chase had dropped to his knees before her, clasping his hands before his face.

"Please forgive me," he said. "Please..."

"For... give?" Zade said. She stood over him with the small knife clutched in her hand. "ForGIVE!? You want me to FORGIVE you!?"

"I know I'm not worthy," Chase bent forward, almost kissing Zade's feet. "But I'm begging you to find it in your heart-"

"NEVER!"

The knife hit the floor beside Chase's head. He turned toward it- just as Zade's hands grabbed his shoulders and hauled him up... a process that hurt her much more than it did him. She dragged Chase to his feet and stared into his face.

"...never..." she repeated through clenched teeth. Teeth that were longer and shaper than they had been a second ago.

"Plea-"

"SHUT UP!"

It took all of Zade's strength to fling her 'savior' across the room. Even then, he stumbled rather than flew... stumbled into a wall, knocking down a shelf of tiny bottles that shattered at his feet.

"You DARE ask for forgiveness!!?" Zade growled as she slowly approached him. "After what you did!? After what you ALL did!?"

"I'm SORRY!" Chase shouted... not a shout of anger, but of pleading supplication.

"Sorry isn't good enough," said Zade, forcing herself to calm down. "Sorry isn't NEARLY good enough. You have to suffer-"

"We HAVE suffered!" said Chase. He paused, and then. "You don't... you don't know, do you? No... how could you..."

"Know what?"

"What happened that night? The night that we... that I... that night? After you left?"

Zade stopped. She stopped because maybe... MAYBE... Chase was on the verge of saying something worth letting him live long enough to get the words out. And also because the longer she took to get to him, the stronger she would be... the more pleasure her wrath would give her.

"Th-they had a d-dozen different e-explanations," Chase babbled. "The slaveowners. The slaves. The church. But it all comes to same thing. Our evil... OUR evil, what WE did... it awoke something. A spirit. A demon. Something. It came to the Ellis farm while they were still looking for you. I was already gone... I ran when I saw what you did to Percy and the others. But I looked back and I saw the mist rising from the woods. I saw the shapes inside it. And then... my gods... I heard the screaming."

Chase shuddered. It was no small tremor, either.... the grown man was literally shaking with fear at the memory of what he had seen.

"What was it?" said Zade, not sure whether to be angry that someone had robbed her of her vengeance... or happy that it had apparently been so terrible. "Who did it?"

"I don't know," Chase said, his jaw chattering. "But it killed... it killed them. The guards. The overseers. Workers. Everyone but the slaves. When the town guard went in the next day, they found bodies... and p-p pieces of bodies... and bodies missing parts that they n-never found. Some were h-h-half eaten-"

"But they weren't ALL dead, were they?" Zade said. "Some lived. YOU lived."

Chase whimpered.

"Oh, but I wish I hadn't. Those who survived... were cursed! All of us!! The Ellis family took the worst of it. Strange deaths... suicides... accidents.... And old man Ellis. My gods, he never stopped screaming! Never! They paid, Bethsaida... they all paid. Nathan Ellis was the only one to escape the curse. He's the only one left-"

"A temporary reprieve that has just expired," said Zade.

"No!" Chase gasped. "You can't confront him! You saw what happened when you came to TOWN! You try to sneak on that island... Ellis is too powerful! There are traps everywhere! And he's got magic! Powerful magic!"

"So do I," said Zade. "Or maybe you didn't notice."

"Your magic didn't help you in town! You would have died if it weren't for me! PLEASE don't go to Nathan's isle! You set foot on that island and you'll DIE, Bethsaida! You'll DIE!"

"You almost sound sincere," said Zade, surprised.

"I AM! I don't want to see you hurt, Bethsaida. I really don't-"

"TOO LATE!" Zade lunged at him, throwing her arm across Chase's throat and pinning him to the wall. "You say you've suffered... well it's NOT ENOUGH! Your evil raised some monster to terrorize you? YES, IT DID!"

Zade leaned in close and screamed into Chase's face:

"I AM THAT MONSTER!!"

Chase tried to recoil from her fury, but he was trapped.

"AND I'VE COME HERE TO PERSONALLY DRAG YOU, ELLIS, AND EVERYONE ELSE I CAN FIND STRAIGHT DOWN TO HELL so that we can ALL BURN TOGETHER!!!!"

"No, please-"

"And you know WHAT!? I'm not the ONLY one! Your precious Ellis is probably ALREADY DEAD! I'm just going to SPIT on the pieces of his corpse, and kill anyone that my brother was foolish enough to let live! THEN I'm taking Ellis' head back to Montfort as a TROPHY! His hollowed-out skull would make a very nice BEDPAN!"

"Ellis is an evil man, I know," said Chase. "But hatred isn't going to defeat him! Hatred never solves anything... E-EVEN if you have good reason to hate! Evil never defeats Evil! It only makes things worse! It only hurts innocent people-"

"There ARE no innocent people! Not here! And ESPECIALLY not you!!"

"I know I'm not innocent! I'm as guilty as anyone, but I've CHANGED! I've CHANGED, but the guilt still torments me!"

"GOOD! And now I'M going torment you!"

"And I DESERVE it! But what about YOU, Bethsaida!?"

"What about me?"

"When I saw you this morning, it wasn't HATE I saw in your eyes... it was PAIN! You're suffering from a wound that never healed! A wound that I helped inflict! Striking out at others will only make it WORSE! You need to forgive-"

"NEVER!"

"Haven't YOU ever done anything you needed forgiveness for? I know you have! And you can be forgiven... but only if you are willing to give the same to others! Carrying the hurt around inside you... it'll only make you end up like ME! For me, it's guilt, for you, its pain... but the end result will be the same for you as it was for me! You'll be tormented! Even after everyone who ever hurt you is dead and gone, you'll STILL be tormented! I can never wash my guilt away except by your forgiveness! That's the only salvation... for you AND me! Please, let me have it, Bethsaida... heal us both... please... look into your heart..."

"Forgive you?" Zade sneered. "I would gladly condemn myself to the deepest pit in hell JUST to know that YOU'LL be there ROASTING BESIDE ME! And is THAT why you healed me... so that I could FORGIVE you!?"

"No," Chase whimpered. "Because it was the right thing to do..."

"What do YOU know about RIGHT!?"

"I know because I've ignored it for so long. I turned my back on what was just... I did horrible, horrible things. Things so bad that now I can never know peace! This..." Chase held up his hand. His wrist was covered with boils, just like the side of his face and neck. "This is my curse. Magic. Potions. Healers. Nothing can take it away. But its just the outside. On the inside... in my soul... its worse. How many times have I seen your face in my nightmares, Bethsaida... how many times have I seen MY OWN face... doing those horrible things.... you don't know what its like! You don't understand-"

All the while Chase was pleading, whimpering and lecturing, Zade was waiting for the one thing... the one word... the one outrageous statement that would set her off. She didn't know what it would be, but she would know it when it came.

And there it was.

"UNDERSTAND!?!" Zade howled in fury as she stepped back. "KNOW WHAT ITS LIKE!?!"

"I-"

CRACK!

Zade's fist caught him across the jaw in mid-syllable. A simple back-fist strike knocked Chase down the length of the wall, into a corner. There, Zade caught him before he could fall. She grabbed him by the throat and slammed his head back into the wall.

"Do YOU know what its like to be GANG-RAPED!? To have man after man after man THROW themselves on top of you while YOU can do NOTHING! HUH!? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT'S LIKE!?"

Zade punched him in the gut just hard enough to NOT rupture his stomach. That would be too quick. Too easy.

"ANSWER ME!" She screamed at Chase as he slowly sank to the floor, clutching his stomach.

"...please..."

"SHUT UP!"

Zade wasn't wearing her boots, but her kicks were almost as effective without them. The heel of her left foot snapped across his right temple. The impact knocked his head into the wall again... making a double-hit.

"...gaaahh-" Chase drooled. Zade grabbed him by his filthy shirt and yanked him out of the corner, flinging him across the room and kicking him in the groin just before he spun out of reach. Chase yelped and stumbled. Zade kicked his feet out from under him, hastening his fall.

In the blink of an eye, he was on his feet again... held upright by Zade's fist clutching his throat.

CRACK!

She brought her other fist down, shattering Chase's cheekbone, hitting him so hard that she knocked him out of her own solid grasp. Chase went stumbling, and fell against the cot where Zade had awakened. He held himself up... barely-

"FORGIVENESS!!! How dare you even SPEAK THAT WORD TO ME!!"

A low side-kick demolished Chase's left knee. His eyes got wide, but before he could scream, Zade's knuckles pounded into the side of Chase's head. His legs gave way yet again, and he fell at her feet. Zade kicked him in the gut.

-WHUMP!-

-rolling him over onto his back. Then her foot came down onto his chest. She felt several ribs shatter beneath her heel.

"aHAACK!" Chase coughed up blood and rolled over onto his side. Good. Zade drove her fist straight down into his exposed kidney. The sound Chase made was so sweet to her ears that she did it three more times just to hear it again. By this time, Chase had curled up into a tight ball.

He lay at her feet, crying... crying openly and loudly.

"...so much hate..." the words drooled from his mouth along with a small flow of blood. "I'm so sorry... so sorry... for what I did to you..."

Apologizing. He wasn't crying because he was hurting. He was crying because he was sorry.

Not good enough.

Zade kicked him in the back, feeling the vertebrae shift out of place and imagining the pain radiating outward from the impact.

"AAAAAAAAAAAA!!!" Chase screamed. The pain straightened Chase out like a rigid board.

Much better. Zade stood him up again so that she could scream into his face once more.

"What you did to ME!?" Zade raged. "What about MY SISTER? You remember her don't you? So you remember how SHE DIED!?"

Zade buried her fist into Chase's stomach.

-WHUMP!-

"CRUSHED TO DEATH!

She did it again.

-WHUMP!-

"CRUSHED by your friend HIRK!"

-WHUMP!-

"While he was ON TOP OF HER!! RAPING HER!"

"...I... never touched... her... I... wasn't there-"

"SHE WAS NINE YEARS OLD!"

-WHUMP!-

-WHUMP!-

-WHUMP!-

Zade kept pounding Chase in the chest and torso... cracking more ribs... until there was an acceptable amount of blood pouring out of his babbling mouth. Then she started punching him in the face, trying as hard as she could to drive her fist completely THROUGH his skull

-CRACK!-
-CRACK!-
-CRACK!-

-feeling his teeth give beneath her knuckles and slide down his throat-

-CRACK!-
-CRACK!-
-CRACK!-

Reveling in the feel of his nose breaking.

-CRACK!-

Then she picked him up and THREW him across the room. It was a fantastic throw... He was amazingly light... and Zade was amazingly mad. He hit the wall with a satisfying *crunch* of at least one large bone breaking. He landed on the stool with her belongings on it, crushing it and sending her pack of equipment tumbling. Several items flew out, but Zade ignored them.

Chase lay sprawled across Zade's array of weapons. His hand was draped across her black leather whip. She thought Chase was unconscious, but he wasn't. His left eye fluttered open... or as open as the COULD be with the bruised and torn flesh swelling around them. He was awake. Zade was
impressed.

Chase looked down, and saw his hand resting on her whip.

He jerked his hand away from it, screaming as if the thing had burned him.

Zade knew why he screamed. She knew. He screamed because somewhere... some place deep down inside this man of peace... a tiny fragment of him wanted to pick up the weapon and use it to defend himself against the rampaging slave.

THAT'S why he screamed.

Zade snatched him up.

"Why didn't you do it, eh?" she taunted. "Why not pick it up... use it on me... why not, eh?"

"...never..." he mumbled, words hardly recognizable. "...never, again..."

"YOU'RE DAMNED RIGHT!!!"

Zade spun Chase around and grabbed him by the back of the head. Then she ran toward the wall, shoving him face-first into the wood. She YEARNED to feel his skull shatter in her grasp... her fingers BURNED for it...

CRUNCH!

But the rotting wood gave way. She had shoved Chase's face through the wall. The splinters and jagged pieces of wood sliced his face terribly, but his skull did not break. He was still alive.

So she did it again-

CRUNCH!

Punching another hole into Chase's rotting shack. This board had been harder than the first... it completed the transformation of Chase's face into an unrecognizable mess. But there was still no satisfying CRUNCH.

"RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAGH!" Zade screamed as she snatched Chase back and flung him away. He flew like a rag doll... body limp, broken limbs flailing. He hit the cot again, then fell to the floor beside it, arms and legs splayed out at odd angles. He didn't move again.

But Zade wasn't finished. No, no this was going to go on for a GOOD LONNNNG TIME!!! Just like that night, years ago... all night... over and over...

"GET UP!" She shouted at his unmoving body. Then, anger still rising unabated, she screamed at him-

-only it wasn't a scream that came out. It was a howl. A long, low, lupine howl of rage.

Zade heard the sound of her own voice and looked down at herself. She was changing. She HAD been changing the entire time. Her body was covered in fur, and now her fingers were beginning to shorten into clumsy paws. She wasn't even standing up straight any more.

"No...NO! NO! NO!"

Zade pushed back. She wasn't going to have the joy of this moment ruined by transforming in the middle of it! She pushed the wolf back... shoved it back into the cage of her mind. It wouldn't go... but she calmed herself... took a few... deep ...breaths... stilled her mind...

Zade's bones crackled as the transformation halted... then reversed itself.

When she was standing up straight again... when there was almost no fur remaining on her body... when her fingers worked well enough to make fists... she stormed over to where Chase lay and looked down at him. Alive? Dead? Hard to tell from looking, but she heard a faint and irregular heartbeat. He looked dead, but he was still alive. Sick, cursed, tortured, or whatever he was... he was stronger and heartier than he seemed.

She reached down and took hold of his jaw to turn his face toward hers. His jaw was loose in her grasp... she had broken it, probably in several places. In fact, just about every inch of him had something broken or bruised. He looked like a slave after a particularly brutal tag-team beating from the overseers. Even her mother would have trouble putting THIS mess back together.

Zade smiled at her handiwork. She decided not to finish him then. She would wait until he woke up... IF he woke up. She would hear him beg for his life before he died. Oh yes, he would beg. Yes, indeed. Then she would carry HIS hollowed-out skull back to Montfort, too-

Horses.

Zade heard horses. Hoof beats... close, and galloping this direction. Riders. At least four. No... six...

Zade cursed herself. She was a lycanthrope, she should have heard and smelled them coming a mile away, but she'd been distracted. Now they were almost here...

Almost, hell... they WERE here! She heard someone walking around outside, approaching the shack.

Zade sprang for her equipment.

---

The slave wheeled him into an ante-room where a couple of other slaves washed him thoroughly as Jallan and Rem scrubbed up and donned white smocks and cloth masks. The slaves then carried Blaymore into the operating theatre, put him on the table and left, closing the door behind them once Jallan and Rem had entered the room. The room with the table they put Blaymore on also contained several carts bearing all manner of strange instruments and devices. Like the cell he had just left, the walls were a plain and featureless metal... but these walls were clean and polished to a startling degree adding to the effect of the powerful mage lights overhead. Blaymore struggled to reign in the wild, scattered fragments of his will... but between the drugs and the nausea, he could do nothing but groan.

"Don't you love our fashion, Michael? Nathaniel believes in microbes, so we are obliged to keep as many of them out of our surgery as possible. I was a little skeptical back in the old days, but after we got some of these instruments, I became a believer myself." Rem secured the patient's limbs to the table with straps while Jallan taped what looked like a pair of tiny golden symbols onto Michael's chest just above his heart. The etched glass screen sitting on one of the instrument cabinets began to display a pattern of jumping red waves accompanied by the dulcet sound of symbols that rose and fell with the waves.

Jallan listened to Blaymore's groaning, "I think he's turned into a heifer in his mind. That groan was definitely a heifer-grunt. Lets get started carving him up like a side of beef, shall we?" Jallan handed a large empty syringe to his assistant. "You delve for stem cells. We've only done *that* a thousand times so you can do it yourself. I am going to open up speed boy's arm here and see if his ligaments match my earlier drawings. Jallan pointed at some yellowed pieces of parchment sitting on the wheeled instrument cabinet just behind the top of Blaymore's head.

Blaymore lay helpless as the alchemist retrieved a small, sharp knife and began probing the flesh around his wrist. He couldn't move. Even if he COULD, the slow-potion in his veins would have kept him to a snail's crawl. And even if he could move at some fraction of his former speed... doing so would be suicide. Such motion required concentration and control... something that Blaymore was increasingly incapable of doing as the other potions continued to poison his brain. Thinking... stringing two coherent thoughts together...was simply too hard. Even FEELING became more and more difficult. The assassin felt nothing... not even a twinge of pain when Jallan's blade finally pierced his skin. Blaymore had to squint through blurred multiple images just to see what was happening to him.

Then he heard a noise.

Voices.

Something in his head. The drugs were making him hallucinate now. He saw Grady... twice. One image from just a few hours ago, when Blaymore confronted him and Jallan in the lab. And again, from years past... when Grady had killed his mother. The images blurred and melted together, forming some incomprehensible fold in Blaymore's mind... making him experience both events simultaneously. The sudden reflex of rage and fear caused Blaymore's body to... do something. WHAT, he couldn't tell. But he heard Jallan speak sharply, and point at the instruments beside the table.

"His ticker's speeding up, but it's nothing to be alarmed at yet. I'll bet he's hallucinating naked women." Jallan checked to make sure he had a few more syringes of slow potion handy just the same. The alchemist peeled the skin away from Michael's wrist and clamped it out of the way with clips reminiscent of a miniature clothes pins. Well one thing's sure, it's speed boy alright. Look at these ligaments. Normal people don't have them. It would be redundant but to a speeder they're very handy; they allow him to change direction with greater power and precision. Just the same, with the rate he moves at, and all the direction changes and so on, his joints ought to already be worn out, but they're not. Either he can magically mitigate inertia, he magically strengthens his tissues, or he regenerates damage, and I aim to find out just exactly what he does."

And all the while, Blaymore's mind spiraled deeper and deeper into itself. Images flashed before him. Scenes from things that had happened. Scenes of things that HADN'T happened. His mind made no distinction between the two. He found himself remembering things that he did that were impossible. Conversations with people he never met... people he didn't even know. Someone was whispering in his ear even now.

Telling him things.

Giving him... Instructions?

Blaymore's mind clenched at the sudden realization that- -that what? What was it he just realized? The drugs... the drugs were making him crazy. He couldn't tell what was going on in his mind any more. Years of meditation and intense mental training... tools and techniques to do everything from alter his own perception of time to ward off powerful mental intrusions. All of it, everything he had learned, was flowing through his fingers like water. The drugs had stripped it away. He couldn't THINK... he couldn't... think...

"It's amazing how time flies when you're having fun, isn't it?" Jallan said as he added another drawing to a considerable stack and sutured up a patch of skin above Michael's toes. I have looked at his ligaments from head to toe, but I still don't quite believe it. There was nothing in my potion that explains his adaptation to the speed. He has muscles other people don't have. I have dissected more people, both living and dead, than you can shake a scalpel at but men are men, except for Michael here. He's got extra equipment, and even the extra equipment doesn't fully explain how he can operate at the speeds he operates at assuming he does a lot of speeding. I can't remember any sort of magical adaptive agent in that potion I gave his mother, but she was an herbal healer, so you never know what *she* might have taken in an attempt to ward off the effects of the potion or to help her baby."

Jallan looked at the cabinet full of instruments at the head of the table and cracked his knuckles. "I guess I'll have to start on the organs now. Umm, but why don't we put salve on all these new wounds we've made. Ahah-ha-ha, he looks we've resurrected him as a flesh golem. You know Nathan and I wound up with Michael's mother Kenyari's effects and Nathan spent quite a bit of time talking to the slaves about what various things in her kit were used for. I thought it was stupid at first, but Nathan insisted that she had been able to get impressive results for almost no money, and that was precisely what we needed with the boat loads of slaves that were coming in to work on the expanded plantation. We had quite a farm of them, so I let him continue. Nathan also spent some time working with a shaman in the area that the green slaves originated from. You see it was a lot easier to buy slaves from local war-lords than it was for us whites to delve into the interior of the country ourselves. This shaman was the right hand of the war-lord we dealt with. Between that and his study of Kenyari's effects we developed some effective medicinals. This salve is a direct descendant of on of the ones Michael's mother used to use with a few added ingredients."

About a three quarters of an hour later, Michael's multitude of wounds were salved and dressed. Alchemist Jallan's head *bleep*ed, "I think it's too late to go on to the organs today. I missed lunch, and If I keep this up any longer I'm going to miss dinner. We've done a good day's work. You got the genetic samples and together we went over his muscles and ligaments pretty thoroughly." Get the gurney and lets load him up. Rem brought the gurney into the operating theatre and they loaded Michael onto it. "Later I'll have to go in and return his collar settings to what they were formerly, but with the slow potion still in his blood, the magic reactive settings just aren't practical. Snag a guard and take Michael here back to the cell. I promised myself a drink, and I'm about to deliver!"

Rem wheeled the patient out of the room and disappeared down the hall while Jallan poured himself a thimble-sized drink from a diminutive bottle of nerve-specific alcohol. The instrument cabinet at the head of the bed shook slightly as its door opened and Nathaniel Ellis carefully got out. He stretched like a cat after a long nap.

"You said a few hours. They must have been special rubber hours because they sure stretched," Jallan said irritably.

"There was considerably more work to do than I had anticipated," Nathaniel replied."

"Well you could have left some for tomorrow," Jallan snapped.

"On the contrary, Michael is far too dangerous to trifle with. If he were to escape and confront me, there would be no time to fight my way through his mental defenses, thus I had to create a side door in his mind to allow me to bypass them."

"And that takes all day? I would think your sparring with the Mieshauw Shin priest would have allowed you to deal with any sort of mental disciplines speed boy could have picked up. Then again that priest usually wins your little contests."

Nathaniel chuckled, "The fallen Mieshauw Shin priest trains my finest gladiators in the martial arts. It would not do if he were unhappy."

"Thinks he wins them?" Jallan said uneasily.

Master Ellis smiled, "Michael's disciplines were appreciable, but I had expected that. There was something more, however. I was not the first person to intrude upon his mind. There was extensive disorganization. At some time in his past, Michael was possessed. I needed to create a side door that would work for me but would not be an open invitation to the demons of his past to take control of him."

"Oh how quaint. You spent all that time so he would not be rendered utterly defenseless?"

"Your sarcasm is off base, Jallan. The work I had to do was extensive. Certain repairs had to be made, and a degree of order had to be imposed on the chaos. If he were to be possessed by another it might take me a few seconds to figure that out so as to launch an attack at the mind in control rather than at his own. In that few seconds, he or his controller could butcher us all. In this case, his safety is our safety."

Jallan nodded reluctantly, "So what did you learn while you were in there?"

"Very little. I had to put off my information gathering for another session. The primary purpose of building an appropriate side door took precedence. It appears you will have the opportunity to inspect his organs after all."

---

In just a few seconds she went from naked to almost dressed. She slipped her arms into her enchanted bracers and gathered her belongings from the floor. She searched for her crossbow and hunting knife, then realized that she had left them behind after the last battle. The town guard had them now. N'Doki's gifts had come out of the pack when Chase knocked it over. She was gathering the tiny statue, the sharpened bone, and the pouch of dust just as she heard someone walking along the wall outside. The galloping horses had stopped, but she heard the horses breathing out front. She had taken too long... they were surrounding the house.

Zade paused to listen.

"...hey, what's this?" a male voice said. A face appeared- thrust into the shack through the head-sized hole that Zade had made with Chase's face. Zade's back was to the wall right beside the hole; he couldn't see her unless he stuck his head all the way in... which would be ridiculously suicidal on his part. "Lords, its a mess in here."

The man saw Chase's body laying on the floor. He pulled his face out of the hole and shouted to someone outside.

"HEY! I THINK-"

He never finished.

Zade smashed through the rotting wood, demolishing a large section of the wall as she yanked him back inside. She grabbed his chin and the top of his head, then twisted. His neck snapped, and she charged outside into the night, thrusting the body ahead of her.

There were two people behind the house: the dead man in her arms, and a man with a crossbow. The man with the bow fired-

-thwuck!-

The not-quite-dead body convulsed violently as the bolt sank into its chest-

-and then erupted into a violent spray of flames.

Enchanted arrows, thought Zade. I just can't catch a break in this town.

"Harris!" the bowman screamed, realizing that he had just struck his friend and not Zade. Zade tossed the rapidly-incinerating body back into the shack, where it began to ignite the structure, sending tendrils of flame creeping up the rotting walls. Meanwhile, Zade charged the bowman. He was too close to get a second shot, and he knew it. He dropped his bow and reached for a short sword-

whhh-KAK!

Zade's whip... bladed tip attached... removed the index and middle fingers from the man's hand in one lash. Before he could even scream, Zade plowed into him shoulder-first. Her back-up knife slid up under his leather chest-armor in four quick jabs as she bore him to the ground.

And now the rest were coming. Zade rolled to the side, grabbing the crossbow and three bolts as she did. She came up into a crouch as two figures on horseback appeared around the left side of the house. One was a man covered head-to-toe in plate mail. The other was a priest.

"Not THIS time-" Zade hissed as she let the bolt fly-

"URK!!" The priest gasped as he fell from his horse, Zade's bolt protruding from his chest. He immediately burst into flame... causing the armored man's horse to panic. As the beast reared up, Zade caught a glimpse of something protruding from the saddle-bag.

Her enchanted crossbow.

The armored man saw her as he regained control of his horse. He charged, drawing his huge sword.

Zade fired. She doubted the bolt would penetrated his plate, so she aimed at the horse.

-thwuck!-

The horse screamed in pain as a fountain of fire erupted from its flank. The animal reared up again, this time sending its rider tumbling. The man hit the ground with the muted 'thud-clang' of metal on dirt. The horse, engulfed in flames with a burning bolt through its heart, simply collapsed right on top of him. The armored man was unhurt, but he was trapped.

"SEND THE SIGNAL!" The man shouted.

Someone at the front of the house shouted back... a word that Zade knew was a spell even though she didn't recognize it.

Instantly, a brilliant ball of golden-white light appeared in the night sky overhead. It looked like a miniature star pulled down from the heavens.

She had no idea how far away the town was, but she was willing to bet that everyone there could see it. Reinforcements would be on the way. AND she had at least one more magic user here to deal with. As much as she would have liked to stay and fight, THIS was neither the time nor the place.

But first, there was the small matter of her property.

Zade sprinted toward the pinned soldier, charging through the flames thrown up by the horse's burning corpse. She grabbed the saddle-bag, just as something else grabbed HER. The soldier's metal gauntlet closed around her ankle.

"Help me!" he cried.

Help?

The man was trapped beneath a burning horse... and he was wearing a suit of METAL armor. Zade imagined it was getting rather hot in there.

She laughed at him, then realized that he was holding HER right in the middle of the flames, too!

"We'll both burn!" he hissed. "Unless you help me!"

"THERE!" someone shouted. Three more men on horseback were appearing around the right side of the shack. A priest, and two men in leather armor.

"Time to go-"

Zade took the last remaining fire-bolt and shoved it down as hard as she could into the eye-slit of the armored man's helmut.

A second later, bright orange fire SHOT out of every crack, joint, and seam in the man's armor.

"AAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEGGGGGHHHHHHhhhh....." The man shrieked as he was roasted alive. Zade tore her ankle from his grasp and sprinted for the field behind Chase's shack. She hoped to loose herself in the grass... which started at waist-height and got progressively taller as it stretched toward the line of trees on the horizon.

"GET HER!" The priest behind her shouted.

Zade expected to hear the sound of horses galloping after her... but first, there was a pause. Zade didn't like the sound of that pause... not at all. She threw herself into the grass just as something arced over her head. It was a net... a net of energy that sizzled and crackled as it barely missed ensnaring her.

The priest shouted something, and suddenly the grass around her was on fire!

Zade ran.

THEN she heard the horses. They were coming fast... lycanthrope or not, she couldn't outrun them. At least not in human form.

"LEFT! RIGHT!" The priest shouted. Two of the three pursuers veered away, one in each direction... flanking her. As she ran, Zade rummaged frantically through the armored man's saddle bag... and was happy to find that they had collected everything she'd left behind, including her hunting knife and a few shuriken. She grabbed-

"THERE!"

The sizzling, crackling sound returned... but this time it wasn't coming from behind her. It was EVERYWHERE. Almost as if-

"AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGHH!"

The priest had conjured the energy net ON TOP of her... it appeared in the air over Zade's head and dropped down onto her while she was still looking for the source of the noise. The thick, brightly-glowing strands were like fire snaking across her skin... scorching armor and skin alike. She fell to the ground, nostrils filled with the reek of burning leather and hair. And death. The scent of death... old and dusty...

And now the soldiers were coming... one from the left, one from the right.... at full gallop. They had their swords drawn. They weren't intending to take her alive.

Zade didn't struggle. She knew that fighting her way free of the net would only entangle her further. But her hands did find their way to her knife. She began to cut, but when the metal blade touched the magically conujured net, something that felt like lightning danced up her arm... across her shoulders... down her other arm... and into the ground, leaving a searing trail of pain in its wake.

Zade couldn't breathe for a second... every muscle in her body locked... But she forced the pain away and reached for something else... ANYTHING else she could use to free herself. In her pack, her hand found the length of sharp bone that N'Doki had given her.

It was humming.

It wasn't a blade... but it would do. Zade snatched it out of the pack and tried to cut the net with it, but it didn't work. In fact, she couldn't even TOUCH the net, because as soon as the bone was free of her pack, it began pulling her arm downward with a strong, irresistible force. She held the length of bone in her fist and, despite her strength, she could not move her arm in any direction except straight down toward the ground. Meanwhile, the bone's humming got stronger. Much stronger. PAINFULLY strong.

"YAAAAAHHH!" The soldiers roared as they reached her.

Too Late!

Trapped beneath the burning net, Zade couldn't even dodge the first sword as the soldier swung. Zade released N'Doki's useless artifact, letting it fly from her grasp under its own power while she thrust her arms up through the net, crossing them above her

-KLANG!-

The blow rebounded off of her metal bracers. Beside her, the bone shard buried itself in the dirt... sinking away as if the solid ground were mere water. Now the SECOND soldier had arrived. They both raised their weapons. There was no way she could block them both, not with the net impeding her movements. And even if she did, the priest was right behind them-

-BMMMM-

A shudder went through the ground... through the entire field, radiating from Zade's position like the recoil from an explosion that was neither seen nor heard, only felt.

The soldier's horses went wild. They reared up... sending one man flying from his saddle. The riderless horse galloped away while the second soldier struggled to regain control of his mount.

-BMMMM-

It came again. Stronger this time.

The priest shouted wordlessly as HIS horse went wild as well.

-BMMMM!-

Again...

-BMMM!-

...stronger...

-BMMM!-

..like thunder under the earth..

-BMMM!-

No, not thunder....

-BMMM!-

-BMMM!-

-BMMM!-

....the beating of an monstrous subterranean drum...

"What Sorcery is THIS!" The priest shouted. And in the next instant.. in the next drumbeat... he saw the answer to his question. He saw...exactly... what manner of sorcery it was.

BOOOMMMM!!

Not six yards away from Zade, the ground tore open as a large shape burst up from beneath the earth. The shape shot into the air... up... up.... up... growing larger and wider.... and then Zade saw that it was not a shape. Not one single shape, but many smaller ones.

Bones. Bodies.

And Zade realized with horror why she smelled death earlier, and what the huge field behind Chase's cabin really was:

A graveyard.

A massive graveyard of slaves... their corpses tossed singly into unmarked graves or thrown together in massive pits with the grass left to grow wild over them. There were hundreds of them. No... more. Entire generations of slaves... whole families... thousands... .

And N'Doki's magic had awakened them all.

BOOOMMMM!!

A second hole erupted, spilling its long-decayed contents up into the air... where they vanished into the massive black cloud that was beginning to form over the field-

BOOOMMMM!!

More bodies flew skyward...

BOOOMMMM!!

....the potter's field was giving up its contents in massive bursts of corpses-

BOOOMMMM!!

-bodies and bones and fragments that leapt for the sky like magnificent fountains of the dead.

Overhead, the dark cloud had grown so large that it covered the entire field. It was filled to overflowing with the skeletons from the graveyard. It's shape roiled and twisted them... surging outward in some places and retreating in others... shaping itself... forming the image of a hideous, gigantic face grinning down at Zade and her attackers.

N'Doki's face.

The N'Doki-image opened its mouth.

"AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!" It bellowed.

And then it began to rain.

sssssshhhhhhhhHHHH-ICKT!

"AAAAAAAAAGGGH!"

It was the soldier that had lost his mount. Like the others, he had been watching the event in awe... but now he was screaming... falling... with a large shard of rotting bone protruding from the center of his chest.

"Retreat!!" the priest cried. "RETREEEEAAT!!!"

The priest couldn't follow his own order. His horse was still bucking out of control, but the other soldier managed to make a run for it.

It didn't help him.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

He was caught from behind. A speeding lance of bone hit him in the back... and not only tore completely THROUGH his body, but through the horse he rode as well. So great was the impact that the soldier split apart, hitting the ground in several pieces... some of which bounced several times before coming to rest.

"AAAA!" The priest screamed as his horse finally threw him. He flew-

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

And was impaled in mid-air. He too, hit the ground in bloody fragments.

The net holding Zade vanished.

She got up... and ran as fast as she could. She was headed for the priest's horse. The terrified animal galloped away, but, in a repeat of her escape from the town, Zade's whip caught the horn of the now-empty saddle-

whhh-KAK!

But this time she had the strength to pull herself along and up into place as the fleeing horse dragged her through the field.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

Zade flinched, half expecting to die in the next instant... but no, that sound wasn't for her.

The reinforcements had arrived.

Ten men on horseback... priests and men in various types of armor... rode through the night, their way lit by a glowing ball of light from a priest's fingertips.

That light winked out. The fingertips that had created it flew in multiple directions... along with the arm and half of the torso; torn apart by a bone-shard from the sky.

The group of reinforcements scattered. Priests... not as stupid as Zade always assumed them to be... called an immediate retreat before the roiling, murderous face hovering in the sky above.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

Zade looked back. She honestly expected some of them to make it. But no, this was N'DOKI'S magic-

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

-and the necromancer wasn't going to summon something of this magnitude just to kill five or six people-

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

Or even ten or fifteen. Zade gulped as she saw the massive black cloud begin to move... its grotesque shape dragging quickly across the night sky... headed south.

Toward town.

It was headed for town. All those people...

Zade almost pitied them for a second. Almost.

Zade put her back to the cloud and rode hard. She had only a general idea of which way she was going, but she would have to wait to get her bearings until she was safely away from this place.

She passed the burning remains of Chase's cabin. The thatch roof... burning like a pyre... hadn't caved in yet, but it wouldn't last more than a few seconds. One of the walls had already collapsed, and fire billowed out from the opening.

Chase was still inside.

"Burn," Zade sneered as she rode on. "Burn in hell..."

---

The storm descended on the town like wrath personified, sweeping across the outlying farms and destroying everything in its path. Houses fell beneath the onslaught of hundreds of sharpened bones raining down upon them. The roofs gave way, the inhabitants were either skewered in their hiding places, or impaled in mid stride as they ran for safety. Men, women, children... none were spared. Except the slaves. The slaves hovered in their quarters, praying to gods both old and new... both real and imagined. Some whispered tales of things best forgotten... of old prophecies... and of an evil greater than their cruel masters. The children screamed... the women (and some men) shuddered... and the storm moved on.

The storm reached the edge of town and passed on unimpeded. Mere minutes had passed since the storm's first spawning. The priests and town guard simply had not had time to organize a defense. Horsemen carrying frantic news of attack were caught by the very threat they brought warning of.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

Their messy deaths were the beginning of a wave of terror that rained... literally rained... down upon the unsuspecting townspeople. Sharpened bones two and three feet long came down from the sky in and unending deluge-

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

Each one seeking the warm, living flesh of someone on the ground. A slave-trader's caravan had the misfortune of being on the street when the storm hit-

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

One by one... and then in twos and threes... and fours... the traders, keepers and overseers vanished in sprays of gore.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

Screaming, they abandoned the slaves and ran for safety.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

Few made it.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

And those that did quickly found their hiding places coming down around them, collapsing from the demonic assault.

And all the while, the slaves remained untouched in their wheeled cage in the middle of the street... trembling while death rained down around them.

The storm continued on through town, never stopping or even slowing down. It hammered at every structure that passed beneath it. Thatch and wooden roofs were like paper to its deadly shards. Stone was the only thing that would stop it, but there were very few in town who had the money or means for a stone roof. Thus, the night came alive with the screams of the dying.

The single scream of a man shook Thaul Handers... High Priest of the Order Illumitat... from his bed.

"WHAT in the name of-"

"YOUR HOLINESS!" Someone shouted while pounding frantically on Handers' door. "YOUR HOLINESS! YOUR HOLINESS!"

Thaul snatched the door open, not quite in anger, but definitely in annoyance.

"WHA-... Yes?" He managed to say. Thaul didn't like being awakened in the middle of the night.. even though this WASN'T the middle of the night yet. Still, something important must be going on. Was that a scream he heard, or was it part of some dream-?

"THE STORM!" shouted the young neophyte in the hallway. Thaul had to look twice... not because he didn't recognize the lad, but because the boy's face was covered in... was that blood?

"What happened!?" Thaul reached out and stroked the boy's cheek. Yes... blood.

"IT COMES FROM THE NORTH! DEATH FROM THE SKY!!"

"Calm down, Lasek... tell me-"

"Father JESSOP is DEAD!!!!! STRUCK DOWN IN THE STREET WHILE WE RAN!!!"

"WHAT!?!"

"COME QUICKLY!"

Lasek.... fourteen years old with far, far too much energy for Thaul... ran down the hall to the stairs. Thaul pulled on his robe, draped his Holy Symbol of Light around his neck, and followed the boy at a much more sane pace.

KRACK!

Something hit the roof above.

"Death from the sky?" Thaul wondered aloud.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

KRACK!

Thaul's quarters were on the top floor, and the temple's dome did not extend this far. There was nothing between him and the sky above except the stone roof.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

KA-KRACKT!

Ahead, Lasek had reached the double-staircase. He didn't go down to the ground level, instead, the boy took the stairs leading up... up to the observatory.

"QUICKLY, Your HOLINESS!" Lasek cried. "YOU HAVE TO STOP IT!"

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

KRACKT!

Dust and sand drifted down onto Thaul's bald head. He looked up... and saw cracks radiating from a tiny hole in the ceiling. Something had almost punched through

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

KRACK!

Another hole. More cracks.

"...dear gods..." Thaul hurried up the stairs, he hadn't taken four steps when the thunderous-

BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!

-resounded down from above. It was the temple's metal dome, into which he was now ascending. Something was raining down on it.. but it was not rain.

BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!BOOM!

No, this was something much more solid.

The 'observatory' was simply a decorative stone balcony that ran around the dome. It was half the distance up to the dome's pinnacle, high enough for someone to see almost the entire town. There were four doors leading out, and Lasek had paused beside one of them.

"ITS ON TOP OF US!!" The boy had to scream in order to make himself heard over the BOOMS of objects hitting the roof.

Thaul unlocked the metal door with the bejeweled key he carried. He pulled the door open-

-And a gust of foul, fetid wind nearly blew him back down the stairs. Lasek went sailing past him-

"AAAH!" The high priest grabbed the railing with one hand, and Lasek with the other. He pulled the boy toward him until Lasek could grasp the railing as well. Then, with a hand-over-hand motion, he pulled himself toward the door-

"GREAT GODS IN HEAVEN!!!!!!!!" Thaul shrieked.

There was a face in the sky. An evil, twisted visage grinned down from a massive dark cloud that was rolling slowly toward the temple. And from the depths of the cloud, great shards of death poured down on the town below. Thaul looked down and saw the bodies... and pieces of bodies... littering the street. He saw a house directly under the cloud collapse from the continuous impacts. People who had taken refuge within it scattered...

... and were struck down as soon as they stepped into the open. Their bodies flew apart... and Thaul recoiled from the horror.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

BOOM!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

KRACKT!

Spikes of bone shattered on the temple dome and on the stone balcony. Behind Thaul, Lasek yelped in fear.

"STAY BACK, BOY!" Thaul ordered. "GET BACK INSIDE!"

Thaul started out... stepping through the door.

"YOUR HOLINESS, DON'T GO OUT THERE!" Lasek screamed.

"STAY BACK!" Thaul raised his hands to the sky, and shouted one of the Holy Words. A circle of golden light blossomed around his hand... rising up to forming a miniature dome over his head.

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

KzZZZZZT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

KZZZZT!

The bone spears shattered when they hit it... and the fragments scattered amid a crackling spray of golden sparks.

"VILE APPARITION!" Thaul shouted at the thing in the sky. "I COMMAND YOU BY ALL THAT IS HOLY... LEAVE THIS PLACE!!"

The dark face looked at Thaul. Eyes the size of houses and as dark as the void itself... fixed on the High Priest.

"DERE IS NOT'ING HOLY IN DIS PLACE!!!!!"

"BEGONE!"

Thaul's hands shot skyward once more... light sprayed from his fingertips. Not a fireball, or a bolt of lightning... but something more reminiscent of a rainbow. Multicolored bands spread across the dark face, which recoiled from the High Priest's power. Recoiled... but did not retreat.

Then the storm retaliated with another howling blast of wind that backed Thaul up several steps. The wind reeked of death... a stench so thick that the holy man choked. His bands of light flickered and faded.

"By the power of..." he began. But he couldn't speak. His throat constricted against the stench. His eyes burned. He shielded his face with his arm while-

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

KzZZZZZT!

sssshhhhhhHH-ICKT!

More bone shards rained down upon him. His protective dome held... barely. Thaul gasped for air, breathing through his mouth instead of his nose. Then he began a choked prayer...

"...Gods Keep and Preserve Us...Save Your Children from Evil..."

"YOUR GODS ARE EVIL!" The necromancer's face taunted. "YOU SERVE DARKNESS IN DE GUISE OF LIGHT! BUT DERE IS A GREATER EVIL! MY EVIL!!!"

"...And Banish THIS DEMON FROM OUR SIGHT!!!"

Arcs of light the color of spun gold sprayed from Thaul's hands, stabbing upward into the demon-cloud's eyes. The entire cloud shuddered and drew back.

"BEGONE!" Thaul shouted. "OUR GODS ARE MORE POWERFUL THAN YOU!!!"

The bands of light returned, joining the golden lightning in a holy assault on the necromancer's cloud. The cloud's dark interior bubbled and boiled as the power poured into it, illuminating it from within.

"BY THE POWER OF TRUTH AND RIGHTEOUSNESS, I COMMAND YOU TO BEGONE!!!"

The rain of bones halted. The foul wind faded.

The cloud screamed.

"NNNRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHH!"

"LEAVE THIS PLACE AND NEVER RETURRRN!!!" Thaul shouted. The cloud swelled... and then contracted suddenly, folding in on itself. The dark face was swept away within the flurry of movement as the cloud began to break apart....

...but before it did, it unleashed a final assault. A single bolt of orange energy that followed Thaul's own bands of power, tracking them right back to their source-

Thaul saw the attack coming, but he didn't dare let up... not now.

"GODS PRESERVE US!" he shouted the instant before the blast hit. The necromancer's power shattered the holy man's protective field and knocked him back into the stairwell beyond. Thaul flipped over the railing and fell... his world lost in the fluttering of his own robes-

"YOUR HOLINESS!"

The boy!

Lasek's hand clasped Thaul's arm. There was a metallic impact as something hit the railing... and a jerk as Thaul stopped falling.

The high priest looked up. The boy had him by the wrist, but Lasek had flipped over the railing as well. The boy was holding onto the stairwell with one hand, and onto Thaul with the other. Both hands were slipping.

"CLIMB UP!" Lasek cried.

Thaul couldn't. His whole body was weak... he wasn't even holding onto Lasek at all, he lacked the strength. The necromancer's blast has drained him, and it probably would have killed him outright if it hadn't had to break through his barrier first.

But it was still going to kill him. Him AND the boy. They were going to fall, and the stone floor was a long, long way down.

"LET ME GO!" Thaul ordered. "Let me go and save yourself!"

"But you'll fall!" Lasek replied. "You'll DIE!"

"DO IT!"

"NO!"

Lasek tried to pull him up. It was hopeless. Thaul was too heavy, and the boy was too weak.

"RELEASE ME!! THAT'S AN ORDER!"

"NO!!"

The boy wasn't going to do it. Thaul tried to move... he could move his arms.. his fingers... but nowhere near the strength he needed to climb. He hoped... he prayed... that the boy's grasp of HIM gave way before his grasp of the railing did.

"YOUR BELT!" Lasek shouted. "USE YOUR BELT!"

Thaul looked down. His robe was secured around him with a rope-like belt and large metal buckle. He untied it with one hand and strained... strained as hard as he could just to raise his arm enough to throw the buckle up to the railing.

-CLANK-

The buckle bounced off of the railing.

"AGAIN!"

"Hold on, boy!" Thaul shouted. He threw the belt gain. The buckle wrapped around one of the railing's metal supports. Thaul wrapped the other end around his own wrist... wrapped it tight, because he didn't have strength to hold on. He didn't know if it would hold, but it didn't matter.

"LET ME GO!" He ordered.

"Are you sure-"

"DO IT!"

Lasek let him go. Thaul swung away... the belt drew tight around his wrist, almost breaking it. But it held.

"CLIMB!"

Lasek was already climbing. Able to use both hand's now, the boy climbed up to safety... and then quickly hauled the high priest up as well.

Thaul collapsed onto the stairs, breathing heavily, barely able to move.

Lasek ducked out of sight... then returned.

"IT'S GONE!" he cried, smiling. "You did it! You saved us!"

"No," Thaul gasped. "No, I haven't saved anyone... not yet."

"But you sent it away!"

"For now. We have to send warning. You must... go... go get the scribes to send messages to every priest... very plantation. Every farm. Tell them... tell them that the Ellis evil has come back to haunt us!"

"Yes, sir."

"Someone must go to Ellis himself... I will, if I'm able, but you must go now! Leave me and warn the others! Tell them, boy!! HURRY!"

"Yes, Your Holiness!" Lasek left him, quickly making his way down the stairs to the lower floors.

"TELL THEM!" Thaul shouted after him. "TELL THEM ITS COME BACK!"

Thaul heard the stairwell door open and close. The boy was gone.

"...gods help us," Thaul said as he tried... and failed... to sit up. "...gods help us all..."

[To Be Continued]