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Kiril recognized that hue, and charged. One of the corrupted Al Qaherans dropped its bow and pulled a great falchion from the sash around his waist. The edges of the falchion glittered with purple fire. The other figure turned to face Prince Monolith. His hand reached up and, with a swift jerk, broke the cord that bound the amulet around his neck. Drawing forth a new arrow, he wound the arrowhead through a knot in the cord of the glowing amulet. Monolith lumbered forward. As the flames limning his body began to sputter and fail, the corrupted elf fired the arrow toward the elemental noble, rending the air with an amethyst tail. Separated from his amulet, the elf toppled forward, his animation spent. Monolith ducked, but the arrow wasn't aimed at him. The missile arced across the chamber and punched straight through the glass wall at the earth elemental's back.

Liquid spewed from the puncture. More disturbing, the amulet, floating within the fluid, pulsed back to life. The water draining from the transparent enclosure boiled, bubbling up in a wine-dark hue. Kiril's attention was snatched away from the wall when a falchion nearly ended her. The other Al Qaheran hacked at her with fire literally burning in his eyes. She countered with Sadrul and groaned in surprise-the elf was incredibly strong! Her new blade absorbed the blow but was nearly knocked from her grip. Worse, the corrupted dervish was quick. She staved off a slash, a jab, and another slash, all in less than a heartbeat. Stumbling back, she sought an advantage. She decided to gamble on Sadrul's supernatural sharpness, which Essam had asserted was the sword's claim to fame. Instead of deflecting the dervish's next swing against the side of her own blade, she fully rotated Sadrul, so its edge was bared to the falchion. Kiril hardly noticed the tug on Sadrul's hilt when the falchion's steel was cut in half.

Kiril grinned and moved in. Without his falchion, the Al Qaheran couldn't protect himself from Kiril's salvo of razor-sharp blows. The elf dervish was dispatched. The Qaheran's amulet tumbled away from his bleeding form and lay pulsing on the floor. Remembering the danger of naked crystal, Kiril aimed Sadrul for one more blow and shattered the amulet's jewel into powder. She hoped it was enough to sever the evil influence and prevent other threats from being sent through it to contest her. Things were not going as well for Prince Monolith.

The prince of elemental earth battled his nemesis, a great pillar of turbulent, chaotic water. The fury of the water elemental, held for ages since its last opportunity to drown the lower halls of the palace, was multiplied many times over from a crystal seed that pulsed in its depths like a fiery coal, goading it and feeding it with a supernatural strength far beyond its already potent abilities. Prince Monolith was held aloft in a column of freestanding water. The column swirled with the fury and speed of a deep ocean vortex. Held transfixed within it, the elemental lord began to dissolve. Muddy clumps spattered the walls of the chamber, out of reach of the elemental who might have used the material to heal himself. Through the watery roar, Kiril heard Prince Monolith screaming. The swordswoman dashed forward, Sadrul in hand. The blade was sharp-sharp enough to disrupt a water elemental? She slashed, penetrating the column at its base, scoring a wide incision in the fluid. A pseudopod of water lashed from the column. Despite her attempt to parry, it slid over her sharp blade and her body without pause. She drew in a quick breath. A fierce jerk sent her to join Monolith in the vortex, unanchored and spinning wildly. She flailed with the Qaheran blade, sending trails of bubbles flitting madly through the turbulent water.

As the chamber spun round and round, she spied Xet as it ducked back down the corridor through which they'd first entered. Bastard familiar. Her quick breath had been too shallow-already her lungs burned. Worse, the gyration forced more and more blood to her extremities. She'd be pulled apart before she drowned. She relaxed her hand, and Sadrul flew from her grip and was expelled. Straining against the spinning water, Kiril retracted her arm and got a hand on Angul's hilt. The Blade Cerulean slipped free of the bondage of his sheath. Lucidity seared her consciousness. Doubts, worries, and pains of mind and body faded as new certainty was born in her right hand and quickly spread to engulf her. The Blade Cerulean flamed triumphantly in her welcoming grip, its star blue fire burning and boiling the tissue of the watery creature that held her. The star elf was spat from the vortex with the velocity of a ballista bolt. She windmilled through the air, but a pillar came up too fast. Agony jolted across her shoulder and back. Robbed of velocity, she fell a full story to the floor. Her left ankle twisted, and she heard something snap.

Through it all, she retained a grip on her sword. For her perseverance, she was rewarded. Kiril stood, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Angul took from her the pain in her back and arm. Her ankle supported her weight as if whole. Kiril raised the blade, and his blue-white light doubled, then redoubled again, shedding light like the day in all directions. Together, she and Angul said, "All abominations will be vanquished." The vortex towered over her, and at its apex it held a madly spinning blot of earth-Prince Monolith. The column suddenly doubled over, like a striking snake, and attempted to smash her down, using Monolith's body as the hammer. Kiril rolled to her left and was clipped on her right hip by one of the earth elemental's thrashing arms. She kept her feet, and the vortex reared back, pulling itself out of reach and the muddy body of Monolith back into the air. The swordswoman took a step to close the distance, and her hip buckled. She fell on her face. The corrupted water elemental's blow had been mightier than she'd supposed. If not for my shelter, Angul spoke into her conscious mind, that blow would have smashed every bone of your fleshy frame. Kiril understood the Blade Cerulean was apologizing for failing to fully protect and heal her from the last savage blow. It was the first time the elf could recall her blade not meeting a challenge. For some reason, the thought was a welcome one. "Blood!" she screamed, forcing herself to her feet despite the wrenching flare in her right side. The blade darkened as it registered her curse, but forwent retaliation for her impious word. The water elemental was aiming another blow, using Monolith as the weapon.

Instead of allowing her to jump away, Angul pulled himself up like a spike to meet the mallet. For the blade, friendships and alliances mattered not. For Angul, overcoming the unrighteous and the abominable came first and last, damn every consequence. Angul was intent on sacrificing Monolith, if he still lived, to deprive the watery scourge of its weapon. "I'm the wielder!" hissed Kiril. As the blow descended, she crumbled and rolled back and to her left, slapping the damp stone with her left hand to absorb the fall instead of her hip and back. She maintained her grip on Angul with her right hand, despite its flare of displeasure. She was ruining its strategy! Kiril sprang to her feet as she exited the roll, anticipating the vortex's reaction. She charged the vortex's base even as its muddy crown coiled up and back. Angul's blue-white fire burned hot as she lunged forward and plunged the blade directly into the vortex. Cerulean battled sapphire, fire contested water. The ensuing steam explosion threw Kiril back across the wet floor. Angul's fire sputtered, but the water elemental's vortex was unraveled. The column of water collapsed, deluging the floor of the chamber. Prince Monolith crashed to the floor, and stone shrapnel from his fall scored Kiril's face. What remained seemed more a mound of mud than anything else. Kiril's will reunited with Angul's as she spied the tiny amulet that still pulsed with venomous luminescence. She dived at the glimmering shard. As a phantom, wine-colored tentacle reached from an interstitial space focused by the amulet, the Blade Cerulean smashed the malign talisman into a thousand burning, guttering splinters.