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The shaman drew a jagged pattern over the other severed hand. As Golgren watched, the hand shriveled, its fingers folding inward. The appendage continued to dry up, turning crisp.

Sarth brought a bony fist down on it. The hand shattered, the dust left by it suddenly blowing away until nothing remained.

Memories slowly returned to Golgren. He leaped to his feet, turning in search of Safrag and the gargoyles. And the Fire Rose.

“Var inu,” responded the withered ogre. “All gone. Gone long.”

“How long?”

The shaman shrugged. “They are gone.”

Golgren gazed at the landscape, thinking of something else. “Idaria.”

“Trails that must cross will cross, trails that must not will not.”

Sarth’s remark caused Golgren to focus on him as he never had before. “Sarth speaks much and speaks well. Sarth also comes to a place where Sarth would not be expected to be found.” He leaned down, his face very close to that of the shaman’s. “How is it that Sarth comes to be in the vale?”

“How does Sirrion light the sun?” asked the elder ogre casually as he rose. “How does the unborn one survive being born?”

Through glittering emerald eyes, Golgren studied his newly maimed limb. “He does because that is what he does.” After a moment’s more consideration, the half-breed looked back to Sarth. “He-”

The shaman was gone.

Golgren evinced no surprise. He looked around, but although there was no possible manner by which Sarth could have so quickly left his sight, the elderly ogre was gone.

Something caught Golgren’s attention. There were images scratched into the ground, images that could only have been put there by Sarth.

There were three. One was a sun. Below it was a horned symbol that he at first took for an Uruv Suurt, but that he realized was some other creature.

The third could only be the Fire Rose.

The half-breed briefly bared his teeth. One foot shoved dirt over the images, though the images themselves were already burned into his mind. Golgren forgot very little; remembering helped him survive.

“I am tired of games,” he muttered to the empty air. “Tired of yours, Sarth, and of the Titans’. Tired also of those of the gods, and tired of my own.” Golgren bared his teeth again. “And so I shall put an end to all the games, yes. I will take the Fire Rose from Safrag, and I will use it but once more, to rid the ogre race of the sorcerers, gargoyles, and all else in my path.” The Grand Khan raised his maimed limb, admiring its awful appearance. “And even with one hand, if it must be.”

Something drew his attention back to the images he had covered. Golgren’s brow furrowed as one registered. Somehow, its details had escaped his gaze when he had inspected the other two.

It was a tree. He recalled another image of a tree, one that was part of a beautiful, intricate tapestry that hung in the palace. The tapestry had been part of the spoils from Silvanost. Golgren recalled the name for that particular tree, even though he had only seen a real one once, long ago, when in the conquered elf realm. An oak.

“My Idaria,” he murmured thoughtfully.

As he looked up from the drawing, he caught a glimpse of something within the mountains beyond: a single gargoyle descending.

With only his well-honed wits and his one hand as available weapons, the half-breed started for the mountains.