Paul Kemp - Dawn of Night

"Pain...." the slaad hanging from his legs said.

The creature sank a clawed hand into Jak's shoulder and began to pull himself up. Jak cried out in agony. He couldn't hold on much longer. He could imagine the creature's huge, fanged mouth just behind his head.

"I'll drop us both, you stinking frog!" Jak threatened, and he meant it.

The slaad tensed at that. Jak prepared to let go of the wall, praying to the Trickster that the impact of the fall would kill him quickly.

Magadon's face appeared over the ledge, and the glowing tip of a knocked, psionically-enhanced arrow followed.

As absurd as it was, Jak could not contain a smile.

"Mags!" he said.

He felt the slaad on his back tense, and could imagine the look of shock on his froglike face.

"Take your fill of this," Magadon said, and fired.

The impact blew the slaad from the halfling's back. Jak heard an aborted scream of pain and looked down between his feet to see the creature plummeting toward the ruins.

"Jak!" Magadon said. "Here."

Jak looked up to see Magadon's extended hand. Jak took it in his own sticky grasp, and the guide lifted him up to the stairway. Magadon was covered in wounds, some of them deep.

Near them, the confused slaad continued to sit on the stairs, wounding himself and muttering.

Jak ignored the creature, touched his friend, and spoke the words to healing prayers. Most of Magadon's wounds closed, and color returned to his face.

Afterward, still eyeing the confused slaad warily, Jak used more healing prayers to close the gouges in his own legs and shoulder.

They looked up toward the top of the tower, and Jak prayed to the Trickster and Tymora that Cale had made it to the top before Magadon's psionic effect had ended.

They looked at the enspelled slaad, then looked at each other.

"We'll go past him if possible," Jak said. "Through him if need be."

"Through him," Magadon said grimly.

As he advanced up the stairs toward Dolgan, the nonplussed slaad looked a question at him.

Magadon slashed open the slaad's throat with a hard cross slash. Dolgan fell backward on the stairs, surprise in his eyes, gurgling and spasming.

Magadon walked over him and up.

"Don't slip on the blood," the guide said to Jak.

Jak nodded and followed.

* * * * *

Cale waited until Azriim stepped into the glowing archway. When he did, the slaad's body blotted out the orange light and cast a long shadow behind him. Cale sensed the semi-comprehensible space-between-space that connected the shadows he'd gathered around him and the shadow that Azriim cast. As always, it was not but a step in a direction that could not be represented on a map, that most beings could not see or sense. He readied his blade, prayed that the tower did not interfere with his ability, and took the step.

A moment of motion and he found himself standing behind Azriim. The slaad must have sensed him for he started to turn, but too late. With gritted teeth, Cale drove Weaveshear into Azriim's back, through his spine, and out his green-skinned chest. Azriim screamed in pain, bared his fangs in agony, and started to fall. Some small thing the slaad had held in his hands went skittering across the floor of the chamber beyond the archway. Warm, black blood cascaded down Weaveshear's hilt and over Cale's hands. He twisted the blade as Azriim collapsed, eliciting another hiss. He put his foot into the semi-prone slaad's back and kicked him off the blade and through the archway.

The chamber under the cupola was nothing more than an open space covered with a metal roof. Arcane symbols were engraved into the metal. Cale had no idea what the cupola's purpose might once have been.

In the center of the chamber, erupting from the stone of the tower like the edge of a giant knife, was a faceted wedge of crystal taller than Cale. It pulsed with power and sent its orange beam of arcane might sizzling through the hole in the cupola and toward the top of the cavern.

"I said I would kill you," Cale said, and was surprised to hear in his words the same emotionless tone he sometimes heard in Riven's voice-the tone of an assassin doing his work.

The slaad apparently could not move his legs. On all fours, he dragged them behind him like dead things as he tried to move away from Cale.

So you did, Azriim replied, and even his mental voice seemed strained with pain.

With surprising suddenness, the slaad whirled around, pointed a palm at Cale, and uttered an arcane word. A fan of clashing colors flew from his hand and exploded around Cale-

-and drained harmlessly into Weaveshear. Cale felt the blade pulsing with the absorbed power, vibrating from its proximity to the magical beam.

Azriim's mismatched eyes went wide. He turned and dragged himself after the item he had dropped. Cale saw it lying on the floor not far from them: a silver nut latticed with black veins, about the size of Jak's closed fist. A seed.

Cale jumped forward and put his boot into Azriim's back. The slaad hissed in pain and collapsed onto his belly.

You would not kill me in these clothes, would you? Azriim asked, and Cale almost laughed at the absurdity of the question.

Cale saw the wounds he had inflicted with Weaveshear beginning to close. The slaad's leathery skin was sealing itself. Soon, Azriim would have the use of his legs again. The creatures regenerated quickly, perhaps more quickly than Cale himself. He knew then that he would have to finish Azriim with brutal, overwhelming, final violence.

Cale hesitated for a moment, wondering if he should spare Azriim, force him to tell all he knew of the Sojourner.

No, Cale decided. He would learn what he needed to know some other way. Azriim had to die. At that moment, chororin required it.

He raised Weaveshear high for a decapitating strike.

"This is over," he said, and was pleased to hear that his voice was his own and not Riven's.

Azriim turned to face him, turned to face death. His mismatched eyes did not show fear, but they did go wide.

By the time Cale realized that Azriim's eyes were wide from surprise, not fear, it was too late.

Agonizing pain exploded in Cale's back. Magical steel pierced his flesh, his kidneys, and scraped against his ribs and spine. He looked down to see the tips of two blades making little tents of his cloak before poking through. Two saber tips.

Riven's sabers.

Warm blood poured down Cale's back, and trickled down his front. Sparks exploded in his brain. His vision went blurry, but somehow he managed to keep his feet. Riven pulled both blades free. Cale hissed at the shot of agony that ran through his frame as the blades withdrew. He tried to turn around but his body would not respond. It was all he could do to stay upright. He clutched Weaveshear hard in his fist but felt it slipping from his grasp.

"It's over, Cale," Riven said, his voice as frigid as a winter gale. "It's over."

A saber stab again impaled Cale's organs. Another. He could not even groan. The strength went out of his legs. He collapsed to the floor, and the fall seemed to take forever. His hearing went dull. Sounds seemed to stretch impossibly long, into a scale he'd never before noticed. Only the rasping of his breath and the irregular hammering of his heart sounded clearly and normally in his ears.

Cale lay on his side, his eyes open, his breathing labored. He felt his shade flesh struggling to regenerate, but feared it would fail. Riven had done a lot of damage. Like Cale, the one-eyed assassin knew how to kill. And the assassin knew how to betray.

In some distant part of his brain, Cale wondered when Riven had made the decision to turn on them, wondered whether the assassin had planned it all along. For a reason he could not explain, Cale thought of the Plane of Shadow. He cursed himself for a fool, a trusting fool. In his mind, he could hear Azriim laughing.