Morgynn watched casually as he staggered to his feet. Cold air stung his wounds, bringing a fresh pain that threatened to fell him again, but he mastered his balance and cleared the chaos from his mind. He accepted the pain, but could not fathom the notion of defeat. This is all that I am, he thought, this is all that there is. Pain and bitter victory. She was right, I know what I am. "Prophecy's hero still stands," Morgynn purred and glanced at the oracles behind her. "I am only now aware of the treasure you are, pretty one. Your blood will consummate my victory here, finally serving a purpose for your wretched existence. You are nothing but another door, for which death gave me a key." He remembered her passage through Khaemil, recalled her blood merging with the canomorph's as she had disappeared. Her road was paved in blood, just as his was in shadows. The differences and similarities between them flashed in his head as patterns of Fate Fall tipped inexorably to their ends. The game was almost over and he was defeated. She would use his blood and he would watch the oracles die at her hands. Maybe this was meant to happen, he thought. Maybe I will walk away, my mission fulfilled. She walked toward him and he knew, looking into her eyes, that this was not true. He could blame the false security of prophecy for Morgynn's victory, but it had been her false prophecy that had brought him here. He clutched at the one option available to him, the only strategy in the Fate Fall that could make a difference. "I know what I am," he finally replied, his voice weak and croaking with pain. He slowly raised Bedlam and turned the blade inward, holding it to his own throat. His eyes, still darkened with shadow, dared her to move even if his painfully tortured voice could not vocalize the threat. "Death does not come so quick, Hoarite," she said menacingly, walking toward him and closing the short distance. "Not while I wish otherwise." She threw herself at him, her fingertips reaching for his chest to initiate the bloodwalk and bypass the oracles' barrier. He felt the pull of her blood and faintly heard her pulse echo in his ears, merging with the sound of his own. He gripped Bedlam and did not move. "You were right," Quin whispered as the shadows within him flared to life. His body faded into an airy nothing, ethereal and bloodless. Morgynn gasped, passing through him harmlessly and stumbling to her hands and knees on the rough marble floor. Hearing her fall, he dismissed the shadows.
Becoming solid again, he spun around, exerting the last well of strength he'd clung to. "I am a ghost." Bedlam sliced cleanly through the fallen sorceress's neck, leaving only a thin red line that refused to bleed for several heartbeats. She tried to cry out, but could not find her breath. Unaware that her voice had become merely a stain on Bedlam's blade, Morgynn's mouth opened and closed weakly. Her call to his blood was severed-only a fading echo of her pulse shuddered through his body. A single drop of her blood spattered to the floor, followed quickly by her head. He looked away as Morgynn's body slumped to the floor and, without emotion, faced the horrified oracles.
Glaring at each of them, his pale eyes rested longest on Sameska, who simply shook her head, avoiding his gaze. Bedlam's tip wavered as if he thought to raise it again, wondering if his work was not quite done. Turning around, he limped wordlessly out of the temple and into the dying storm.
EPILOGUE
The remainder of the long night passed in chaos. Morgynn's undead creations, the bathor, turned on one another in a frenzy of violence at the moment of her death. Tied by mystic threads to her blood, the faint control they had over their own actions was lost. The hunters, depleted in number and struggling to maintain the defensive barricades, watched in sickening horror as the walking dead tore each other apart, trying to reach the now stilled hearts that no longer denied the death of their bodies. The Gargauthans were scattered and forced back by the feverish undead, unable to assert control over them. As they retreated from the bathor's madness, they were met by the stalking battlebriars standing over the steaming corpses of the malebranche. The Order of Twilight's battle began anew, this time fighting to escape its own failure. Mounted hunters harried the wizard-priests from outside the ensuing battle, chasing the handful that escaped into the Qurth as others transported themselves by spell or scroll. Sensing defeat, the gnoll warriors took advantage of the disorder to loot empty homes of valuables, pausing only occasionally to battle groups of hunters along the walls. Taking what they could carry and abandoning their dead, they scaled the walls, skirting the wailing bathor and deserting their allies. The storm calmed to a gentle rain as the heavy clouds thinned. Thunder eased to a soft growl as the lightning retreated to the ruin from which it had been birthed.
The lack of thunder was unfortunate for those who sat listening to the ravages of the undead. Screams of unintelligible nonsense were so much the louder in the quiet left in the storm's wake. Warriors openly wept over fallen comrades. Those who hailed from the northern edges of the Qurth filed away to sit and stare at the white walls of the temple.
They tried not to think of those relatives and friends they'd known in Logfell, hoping not to see familiar faces among the maddened bathor.
The morning sun, when it came, was boon and bane for the weary defenders of the small city, illuminating the death and destruction that had been brought to them. Grassy fields with streaks of brown among the green waved in the gentle breezes of early autumn, under the first sunlight in several days. The topsoil dried and cracked in the heat of an awakening day. Empty farms, quickly abandoned for safer ground only days ago, greeted swift messengers dispatched to other towns to seek help. Those from Splondar arrived first, empty-handed and full of dread. They were joined later by riders from Sprynt of the Blacksaddle Barony: a lone hunter rode flanked by several soldiers of the Barony, clad in their blued chainmail with surcoats bearing a lone white turret on a black field. The defenders they met at the southern gates eyed them warily. Relations with Blacksaddle had been strained for years. The soldiers bore orders from Lord Marshal Gurnd of Sprynt to inform the defenders of a detachment of troops en route to Brookhollow. The men-at-arms paled as they observed the throng of twitching and writhing bodies massed in the center of town, nodding absently as the events of the battle were told by tired voices. The wounded were gathered in the cobbled courtyard of the temple after the temple itself overflowed with the injured. Those citizens too old or too young for battle, hidden in the chambers beneath the temple, walked among the fallen and dying, searching for loved ones under the bright noonday sun. Dreslya found Elisandrya that morning, unconscious and grievously wounded, and moved her to her own quarters within the temple. She spent much of the day with Eli, dressing her wounds and watching over her. She had no wish to face Sameska or the oracles, preferring to leave that task for the next day, after her sister woke and her emotions cooled. The sunset, when it came, was viewed with trepidation by those who witnessed it.
Quinsareth leaned against the wall in the dim candlelight of a temple corridor, staring at the door across from him. Ossian's shield felt heavy on his arm, a sudden weight that had burdened his mind since the battle with Morgynn. Upon awakening in an abandoned home, he'd looked upon the face of the shield several times before finally entering the temple and finding his way to this door. Though she didn't know it, Elisandrya had told him the tale of the shield over and over in his mind, the legend of Ossian and his love. Zemaan's face, wavering when he'd found the shield in Jhareat's tower, had faded entirely during the battle. What remained was something for which he had no words or explanation. Taking a deep breath, he pushed away from the wall and knocked on the door. Elisandrya's sister, Dreslya, opened the door to look out at him. The legend of Ossian and Zemaan had brought him here, wounded and weary, but he was beginning to heal and hoped to sit with Elisandrya. "She's sleeping. She has been since, well, since it ended," she whispered through the crack in the door. She looked at him more closely and added, "I know you. You-"