“Begone, useless fools,” came a sharp command, and this time Dove heard enough of the sharp voice to know that it was female. It came from a tall woman with nightdark hair and darker eyes who was walking barefoot out of the trees, a loose cloak eddying around her ivory limbs and a dark mask failing to conceal her smile.
Two gliding steps brought the woman to the edge of the stones as bladesmen fled into the woods like hurrying shadows. The cloak was flung off and the mask followed, and from the ivory-hued body thus revealed inky darkness flooded, devouring moonlight as it came.
Trees, the moon, and even the corpse-strewn stones of The Place vanished before that swift-spreading gloom, but in the resulting void Dove found she could still see some things.
Or rather, some people. Uncle El lay curled over in pain, his skin glowing a pale white and that bright blue-white fire leaking from him in ribbons and pooling around him.
Storm’s skin was white, too, and so was Dove’s own—and blue-white flames pulsed in slices and gashes on both of them.
A similar moon-white glow shone brightly from the shapely woman confronting them, but her skin was moving, thrusting outward here and there as if trapped fists were reaching out from beneath it, and darkening where it did so. Darkening and erupting into long, cruel black claws, and narrow-snouted, many-toothed jaws.
“Behold,” the woman purred, “the Dark Talons of the Devourer.”
She glided forward, shapely no longer, a small forest of eel-like necks ending in clamshell-like jaws, wriggling taloned tentacles, and that soft cruel smile.
“In the sacred name of Shar I feed,” she announced calmly, kneeling over the dead bladesman and the struggling, still-pinned Storm beneath him. “I, Vrasabra the Anointed, Priestess of the Night.”
There was a brief flash of magic from somewhere behind the priestess, but it howled into strange music, followed by Laeral’s disgusted curse.
Vrasabra smiled. “Handy, this place of wild magic. And fitting that creatures of Mystra should perish because of her carelessness.” Talons reached forward almost gently to pluck aside the dead bladesman and reach for— Elminster gasped out a desperate spell and the night boiled.
Blood burst from him in all directions in a blue-white mist. The very stones of The Place shook, then the tall, slender wizard was suddenly hanging in midair, with great white wings sprouting from him.
Three, four—Dove watched in horror as a spine sprouted from Uncle El’s disbelieving face and grew feathers, white pinions racing along its length with uncanny speed as he
moaned, sobbed, and flung himself forward in a chaos of mismatched wingbeats, rolling like a tumbleweed.
Vrasabra the Anointed hissed and shrank back, talons and jaws gathering in front of her in a wall of menace.
Elminster did nothing to her, instead snatching up Storm in his arms as he hissed in pain, leaking blue-white fiery blood all over her, and flung himself forward into the night.
“Get the stones!” he gasped at Dove, as he hit the ground hard and rolled—or tried to. A crumpling chaos of wings spilled Storm onto the ground in a comical collapse that made the priestess of Shar crow with mirth—and pounce.
Then the night lit up with a white flood that seared eyeballs and left everyone blinking dazedly at Laeral, who stood wearing nothing but torn and much-patched forester’s breeches—and a coldly sneering smile.
“A step too far, Sharran,” she said triumphantly, her eyes igniting like two silver flames. “Now kiss the Weave.”
The very air tore audibly as magefire slashed talons and claws alike, hurling a shrieking Vrasabra of Shar headlong across The Place. Stone glowed and heaved where the roiling fires touched them, but released the priestess, who crashed into saplings on the far side of the ruins, trailing smoke.
Dove turned, caught up a fallen knife, and ran toward the woman—but behind her Laeral’s cry of glee rose into an ear-stabbing scream that went on, and on, and…
Brightness crashed through and flooded all, carrying Dove far, far away.
* * * * *
Swimming through glimmering waves of tears, the moon hung silent and serene, telling Dove wordlessly that not much time had passed.
She sat up—or tried to, but somehow found herself on her face.
She tried again, but the night whirled around Dove then ebbed away, leaving her on her back again.
Rolling over with slow caution, she saw that the glade was awash in a soft blue-white glow. The very air was glowing.
That glow seemed to be rooted in the sprawled body of Laeral, who lay senseless on her back, staring at nothing.
Between Laeral and the wincing, staggering priestess of Shar—whose bare body trailed dozens of limp, lifeless jaws and talons, though a handful still writhed and snapped hungrily—lay a scorched area that no longer held any ancient stones.
The Place was gone.
Its slabs and the base of its pillar had vanished, swept away into some otherness that seemed to have claimed half of Uncle El’s wings—which were sheared off in a straight line as if sliced by a sword. That left only their roots sprouting from … the sprawled, motionless body of the patient man who’d reared Dove and her sisters.
A scorched and dazed Storm was wandering aimlessly among the trees and trampled ferns beyond Elminster, where the huddled thing that had once been Andur Marlestur also lay. A few daggers and severed arms and hands were also scattered about, but most of the dead bladesmen had vanished with the stones they’d been sprawled on.
“Ohhh,” the Sharran gasped, clawing her way up a tree until she was more or less upright, “that was a spell. No more wild magic here. Gone, quite gone.” She tried a smile, and found that—between winces—it managed to linger.
“Leaving none of you strong enough to resist the Devourer.”
Vrasabra the Anointed left the tree behind and came unsteadily through the glow toward Storm, almost falling once.
She’d nearly reached her mumbling, staggering prey when the body of Andur Marlestur stirred under her feet, tripping her into a headlong fall.
The Sharran came up snarling, turning to meet her new foe—and by then the dead lordling was on his feet, his head lolling lifelessly and his eyes fixed on nothing.
“No undeath comes so quickly!” the priestess snarled in disbelief, stepping back to hiss the words of a spell that would impose her will on the walking corpse.
The remains of the Lord of Tharnwood folded its arms politely and waited for her to finish—but the moment she’d done so, the bloodless body staggered forward to embrace her.
“Kiss of the goddess!” Vrasabra spat in revulsion, thrusting the shambling thing away from her.
Dove found fresh grief welling up in her as she saw her Andur stagger doggedly forward, trying to aid her one last time.
He couldn’t be alive, simply ‘twasn’t possible! She shook her head through new tears, found one dagger, then another, and launched herself at the Sharran.
Who saw her and spun around with a snarl, talons lashing out.—
Which was when Storm, also staggering doggedly forward, as if someone was shoving her along and holding her up at the same time, walked straight into the priestess from one side—and poor dead Andur slammed into her from another.
Crushed between them, Vrasabra fell the only way she could, toppling forward into Dove’s waiting daggers with a helpless cry.
Talons raked and claws bit in a brief frenzy that left Dove sobbing in pain, but Andur thrust himself between her and the snarling priestess, standing like a shield as agonies fell away from Dove to savage him instead.
Biting her lip against still-sickening pain, Dove reached around her dead beloved and drove the daggers hard into what she could no longer see, again and again.
After a time, the priestess gave a soft gasp, and Dove’s reaching fangs found only air.