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The saurial sighed, realizing how hard it must be for Alias to give up the powerful emotions. They had fastened themselves so strongly to her essence that losing them would feel like losing herself. She could not accept that there was so much more to her being than these poisonous, wounding feelings. He ran his fingertips down the brand on her sword arm, trying to kindle a spark of the link that bound their souls together.

Alias shivered at the paladin’s touch. She could sense his great serenity, his compassion, his tenderness and concern. She knew, though, that she was nothing like him, would never be, could never be as good. There were times she wished she were, but wishing did not make it so.

Dragonbait looked up suddenly at the manes massing behind Alias. He could feel their evil darkening, growing more powerful.

Alias struggled, but she remained trapped in the mist shell.

“Alias, please,” the paladin begged. “Let it go. I know you can do it.”

“I can’t,” the swordswoman snapped. “I’ve tried.”

“You can!” Dragonbait snapped back.

“No, I can’t!”

“She doesn’t dare,” Mintassan interjected. “It’s her only protection.”

“Protection?” Dragonbait growled. “It’s trapped her in this evil place. How is that protection?”

“If she gives up her anger and hatred, there’s nothing left but bitterness and despair,” the sage pointed out. “Why would she want to feel them?”

The paladin nodded. Bitterness, the shadow of anger, and despair, the evil without a color. He wasn’t very familiar with them, so he’d forgotten them both. Mintassan knew them though, intimately.

“Alias, what Mintassan says is true. You’re holding onto the anger and hate because you’re afraid of the bitterness and despair. You know they’ll hurt you even more. But you can shed them, too. Trust me.”

“I am not bitter and despairing!” Alias shouted. “I’m just stuck in a damned rock. Go get Durgar. Maybe he’s got some priest prayer that can break this thing open.”

Behind Alias the mist was taking on a serpent shape, and the serpent was rising up. “Alias, there isn’t time,” the paladin insisted. “Your life depends on it. Let them go.”

“I have no reason to be bitter or despairing,” Alias argued. “Victor was a monster, and I’m well rid of him. He wasn’t worthy of my love. I know that.”

“It’s not the loss of that worthless man that brings you pain,” Mintassan said. “It’s the loss of the love you felt. Your love was good, and when it died, it left you empty.”

The mist serpent began winding around the border of the spell of protection.

Alias glared at Mintassan. “I don’t have time for stupid conversations with sages. What do you know about my love? You don’t know anything except what you read in your dusty old tomes.”

“Oh, don’t I?” Mintassan replied, holding her eyes with his own. “Do you think it was easy for me watching someone I cared about fling herself at someone as unworthy as Victor Dhostar.”

Alias felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her, as if she’d run into a wall of understanding. When she’d first arrived, the sage had cared less about Westgate than she had, but for some reason he’d been there to save her life. Then he’d thrown himself into her quest for vengeance. Now he stood in this stinking, gods-forsaken, evil-ridden pit of a planar pocket arguing with her.

The swordswoman flushed with embarrassment. Why did he have to tell her this?

“So the question is,” Mintassan said, “if the lowly sage survived his battle against bitterness and despair, why won’t the great warrior woman risk battling them, too?”

Alias squeezed her eyes shut, trying to keep tears from falling out of them. Mintassan was right. She missed her love. It had made her feel warm and safe and happy.

But she could feel those things without it. She knew she could. Besides—she might even love again—maybe.

Dragonbait sighed with relief as the shell of mane mist began to melt from Alias’s legs and drift away from the adventurers.

“What in Mystra’s name is that?” Mintassan whispered, finally noticing the serpentlike evil wrapped about the circle of protection and hovering over them.

“The manes have found a focus,” the paladin said, “a leader to organize their attack.”

Alias spun around and looked up at the serpent of mist. She looked into its bright blue eyes. She gasped. “It’s Victor!”

“Move toward the portal,” the paladin instructed, taking Alias’s arm. “The circle of protection should move with us.”

As the three adventurers shifted their position, the serpent hissed with anger, but it uncoiled and let them pass, unable to withstand the magical constraints of Mintassan’s spell. It followed them to the portal, devouring mist as it moved, growing larger and darker.

The portal loomed ahead like a hole of darkness. Dragonbait stepped out onto the bridge and held his hand out to Alias.

As Alias stepped into the night sky over Westgate, she took a deep breath of the cool air and laughed. Mintassan flew out from the portal and swooped over the bridge.

Dragonbait gasped and spun about. His shen sight suddenly perceived a hundredfold increase in the evil emanating from the mane serpent. Mintassan’s circle of protection had dissipated when he had flown through the portal. The serpent wavered over Alias’s head and struck before the paladin could pull her out of danger.

From the top of the tower, Jamal, Olive, Thistle, and Durgar watched in horror as a huge, dark serpent swung down over Alias and coiled around her body. Dragonbait thrust his fiery blade into the creature, and Alias stabbed at it with her sword. Little bits of glowing mist seeped from the creature wherever it was hit, but the beast remained intact, healing over the cuts almost immediately with some otherworldly power. Mintassan hovered over the beast and sent five magic missiles shooting into the creature’s hide, but they passed right through the monster and fell to the ground.

The serpent brought its head down to survey the warrior woman in its embrace. Noxious poison dripped from its fangs. It opened its jaw and brushed its tongue along her face. It was toying with her before it devoured her—lording its power over her, just as Victor had when he had embraced and kissed her poison-paralyzed body.

“Close the gate!” Olive shouted to Thistle.

“If I do that, the bridge will collapse. They’ll fall to their deaths,” the girl argued.

“Durgar, Lady Thistle said the place was full of manes. Aren’t they some sort of undead?” Jamal asked. “Maybe this thing is, too. Use your power to turn it away.”

Durgar looked exceedingly doubtful of the actress’s suggestion, but he began a prayer, nonetheless, asking Tyr to compel the monster to flee.

“It’s working!” Olive shouted.

The serpent began to turn translucent, all except the tongue, which took the shape of a man and fell from the monster’s mouth to the ground far below. The body of the serpent began to turn to mist, which drifted quickly back through the portal.

Unfortunately, the part of the serpent that had been coiled about Alias was no longer over the bridge. As the coils dissipated, the swordswoman fell with a shriek toward the ground—

To be caught by the arm by a flying sage.

Mintassan set the swordswoman down on the roof of the tower just as Dragonbait stepped off the bridge. They turned to watch the last of the mist escape through the portal, fleeing from the power of Durgar’s god. Thistle flung the brooch across the bridge and into the portal. The bridge retreated and disappeared, then the portal snapped shut, leaving the top of the tower in darkness.

Olive leaned over the battlement and stared down at the ground. Members of the watch held torches aloft as they surveyed the dark shape that had fallen to the ground from the top of the tower.