Lilith's Collar

“Open the gate!”

The order echoed through the bailey during the civil dawn, bouncing off the flagstones and the flint and mortar walls. To the left of the vestibule, a young half-orc went into action, guiding the first of two oxen towards the gate hoist connected by chains to the iron gears of a portcullis that separated the town of Farholde from the wilderness beyond. Jheren stood beside his mount, a coffee colored steed he called Draven, fussing over the saddlebags and tack for the fourth time this morning. He checked again that his enchanted blade, Mystara, was secured against Draven’s flank and could be easily accessed from atop the mount.

Argus, who had shouted the order, was tired and lean, wrapped in the battered remnants of a guardsman’s coat, eyes red from many sleepless shifts. He watched the mechanism with a vigilance that implied some prior horror with stuck gates. Above him, the portcullis shuddered, caked with decades of rust and mud, before the oxen **** it up with a shriek. The gears knocked as they spun, then locked with a hollow clunk that was somehow more unsettling than the screaming metal.

Jheren swung into Draven’s saddle. The movement was easy, smooth, military, but something about it still betrayed a practiced unease. His mind sifted through the likely scenarios that would play out once they left the town’s perimeter—ambush, sabotage, even a simple but deadly misfortune like a rodent hole found by one of Draven’s legs was a threat worth considering. He had spent the last ten years training himself to expect only trouble, and there had been little to disprove the utility of this worldview.

As Argus looked up the flagstone road that led from the gate to the central keep of Farholde, he saw reason to let out a groan.

“Looks like the mayor wants you to hold up, Jheren,” he grumbled while returning the wave of the plump aristocrat who was quickstepping towards them from a hundred yards out.

Oswin Brightwell was a plump man with rosy cheeks, his portly figure wrapped in fine silk robes adorned with golden trim. He carried himself with a confident gait, but his quick-stepping approach betrayed a sense of urgency. He kept his steps high and careful, as he noted the road slick with morning dew. A self-proclaimed brilliant and ambitious man, he would not allow himself to be so lazy as to lose the opportunity to show that it was he who sent the hero out to solve their current problem.

Jheren slid from the saddle with the fluid economy of a man who'd drawn steel a thousand times, his boots meeting the flagstones in a stance that betrayed readiness. A flush crept up his neck as he recalled the tangle of sheets he'd left behind—his wife's knowing smile as he'd fumbled with his baldric in the dark. She would have known precisely how to deflect Oswin with a gracious word, whereas Jheren could only clench his jaw against memories of their arguments. The mayor's tolerance for the brothels and gambling dens that lined the eastern quarter made him, in Jheren's estimation, an adversary of inconvenient political standing and a fat lecher. His wife, Clara’s voice cut through his judgment: "Oswin's quill has saved more lives than your blade ever will." The memory stung, but he couldn't deny its truth.

Jheren inclined his head just enough to acknowledge rank without suggesting deference. "Lord Mayor," he said, pitching his voice to carry across the remaining distance between them. He made sure to rise before accepting Oswin’s extended hand.

“We have a treaty with Chief Gunnar, as you know. He won’t admit that the **** holding the ruins is his, even if they are,” Oswin said. His distrust of the war chief was evident enough that Jheren couldn’t understand why the mayor bargained with the orc so often. “The treaty doesn’t protect them if they aren’t Gunnar’s, so slaughter them all, Jheren! If Gunnar wanted them spared, he should have removed them himself.” He was loud enough to make sure every soldier on the gate could hear him.

It was the same thing Jheren had heard the day before, when he agreed to set out to get rid of them. The mayor was leaving out the urgency regarding tonight’s new moon and the fear that they would complete some foul ritual if they waited for the wizard Aurelia to arrive. She had been contacted and was on route, because if Jheren failed to stop them, there was no telling what they might unleash, and she would be desperately needed. Aurelia could call down a chain of lightning on the ancient circle to end their plot with a single blow—if she were here. Jheren’s previous successes were working against him; he knew a few combat spells, but he would have to get in close and take them out in smaller groups, blade in hand.

Jheren and Aurelia were close comrades, and would be closer if she were interested in men and he weren’t married. They made a good team, but she often traveled for reagents, lore, and to study ruins. Jheren didn’t have the luxury to leave Farholde unattended for so long. Right now, he was thinking that these goblins had been smart enough to wait until she was away, while some strange star probably aligned with an old rock so that they could call out to something wicked. Some goblin had actually been lucky enough to have seen an opportunity that she had missed. He imagined Aurelia furious that some bone-rattling shaman had outmaneuvered her, and in her own way, having just as bad a day as he was about to.

The mayor drew in a lungful of chill air, eyes darting past Jheren to the soldiers and volunteers in the yard. “We are relying on your efficiency, Jheren,” he said, pitching his words lower now, as if intimacy could manufacture trust. “You won’t have much backup, other than. We can’t risk Gunnar hearing we’re dispatching a **** into the western crags, not with his dispatch to the market arriving so soon. The timing of all of this is unsettling, to say the least.”

“The rangers at The Broken Tusk should assist,” Jheren responded. “I’ll gather them there. If there are no further delays, we’ll end this by dusk.”

Oswin's gaze lingered on Jheren, taking in the smoked mithril plates affixed to well-worn leather armor that had seen real combat, not parade grounds. The hero's copper colored beard diddn't quite hide the scar that pulled at his upper lip, and those green eyes, sharp as a falcon's, made the mayor shift his weight from one foot to the other. This was a man whose shoulders had carried Farholde's safety for years, and they showed no sign of buckling now. The sun broke over the horizon as if framed by the city gates.

Jheren turned from him and once again mounted Draven, his wedding band catching the dawn light as his hand gripped the reins. The stallion shifted beneath him, nostrils flaring at some unseen disturbance in the air. The few early risers who were present watched the hero's silhouette against the rising sun, his shadow stretching long behind him as if **** to follow out the gates.

***

Hours later, Jheren approached The Broken Tusk at a hard trot, the sun little more than a cold smear behind the scrim of clouds. The inn sat black and sprawling on the shoulder of the road, its thatch roof patched with tar where the spring storms tore at it. The yard outside was churned to a paste from the frequent rains and the boots of travelers. Jheren dismounted, his thighs aching from the ride. He passed Draven’s reins to a stable hand, Greg or Gary, he couldn’t remember, the boy’s face stayed hidden under a mop of straw hair, and pressed a silver coin into the damp palm.

“Water him, but not too much. Grain and mash, he’s earned it.” The stable hand grinned, all teeth, and led Draven away.

Inside, the scent of ale and old onions mingled with the harsher tang of pipe smoke and unwashed bodies, creating a thick and pungent aroma that clung to the air like a heavy cloak. The taproom was crowded, with a scattering of empty chairs, and the sound of merriment and conversation filled the space. The clinking of tankards and the occasional burst of laughter joined with the gentle hum of voices. Jheren's hand instinctively rested on Mystara’s hilt as he scanned the room, knowing that trouble could easily rear its head in a place like this, but confident in his own ability to handle it. This was a familiar place to him, a place where he had spent many nights in search of a warm meal, cold ale, and a comfortable bed. It was also a place where he often found a need to deal with those who enjoyed the innkeeper’s blind eye for the everyday criminal activity that took place here.

Jheren saw a tavern girl, or rather he heard her first: a high keening gasp that rose above the low drone of the inn. Not quite the sound of pain, not quite pleasure, but possessing the **** edge of both. She straddled a patron’s thighs in the darkest corner, where the lamplight failed and shadows went soft and blue. The girl’s hair—blue-black with a single ice-white streak—was drawn up into a high knot, exposing a nape delicate as a porcelain wineglass stem. She wore a collar, of course, the thick brass visible even in the dim light. The Tusk’s signature was that girls claimed by the tribes worked here. At this hour, the help was supposed to be stacking tankards or fetching stew, but this one had her back pressed to a man’s chest, both his hands up beneath her apron front, fingers spread and kneading as if her breasts were bread dough. Her head was thrown back, lips parted, and the sounds she made had a musical quality, helpless and high, punctuated by ragged inhalations, then a low laugh, as if she couldn’t make herself stop. The scene was as clear an advertisement as the painted sign over a brothel door. She moved her hips in a slow circling grind while making eyes with Jheren.

It was too early for this. Jheren felt the old anger rise, the first flush of heat at the base of his spine as she held his gaze. Her eyes invited him to watch while she writhed against the stranger beneath her. It was as if she fed on his revulsion. He tore his eyes away and scanned the room for Throg, the innkeeper, finding his hulking silhouette at the edge of the stockroom beside the bar. Throg returned from swapping out a cask of porter to find Jheren standing at the bar waiting for him. He let out a long sigh, but for once seemed somewhat grateful for the hero’s presence.

“You here ‘bout the bastards at the henge?” He let the seemingly rhetorical question hang between them until Jheren nodded. “They snatched Snizz’s girl, Ellie, not that you ever cared ‘bout a spunk junky.”

He gestured to a surly goblin that sat at the other end of the bar with his head down and his eyes intensely focused on the inside of his flagon. Snizz looked like the loss hurt.

“So she’s twice a victim, then,” Jheren responded.

“No doubt she’s intended as a sacrifice to the dark bitch,” Throg didn’t hide his contempt for the gods.

Throg’s upbringing had been a harsh one. At nearly fifty years old, he had been born when times in the region were different. Back then, the Empire held a strong presence in the region and actively held the land that it had claimed from the high orcs. Their presence hadn’t been strong enough to prevent every raid, however, and Throg’s mother had been collateral damage in a war between orcs and men. She had lived in captivity for a time, and Throg was the result of what she had endured before being rescued. Jheren understood the anger that Throg harbored for a world that never welcomed him a little better than he could understand why it made him apathetic about the broken women he surrounded himself with.

War with the Cithians far to the north had shifted the Empire's priorities. For twenty years now, fragile treaties between town lords and local chieftains have maintained an uneasy peace. Men and goblinoids who once killed each other on sight now could share a drink in a place like Throg's. Behind the bar hung two documents: a vellum writ bearing Oswin's flowing script and a stretched square of leather branded with orcish runes. These dual decrees granted Throg his authority—though how he'd acquired The Broken Tusk remained a story he never told.

"Where's Merick?" Jheren scanned the tavern a second time, searching for the familiar weathered face of the ranger who enforced what passed for law in these borderlands. He did notice a stranger who was trying not to be noticed, paying close attention to their conversation. The man looked better dressed than most of the other patrons, and Jheren wondered what business had brought him here. Right now, his focus had to remain on stopping whatever dangerous rite was about to be performed.

“He left a paper bird for you,” Throg reached into the breast pocket of his rough linen shirt and pulled out an enchanted pajarita. The bird would take flight when imbued with a bit of mana, and Jheren rightly supposed that it would lead him to where Merick probably watched over the ruins up the hill. Jheren hoped Merick wasn’t alone.

Throg followed up on Jheren’s thoughts, “He left a young buck here to go with you. Michelle is rewarding his bravery in advance for going after Ellie.” Jheren groaned as Throg jerked his chin towards the lewd scene that had greeted his arrival.

For a moment, Jheren pondered going alone and skipping the humiliation—he could never get used to the tribal custom of payment before the deed, even if that were technically not what was happening here—but a contract was a contract. For all his time in the Tusk, he’d never learned the proper etiquette for interrupting a girl mid-ride. She was going at it with such abandon, he could almost pretend it was what she wanted, but the collar gleamed at him with that same old certainty.

He turned to Throg, “Can you tell him I’m ready? I don’t trust myself not to twist someone’s head off if I have to break that up.”

Throg gave a single, slow nod, the closest thing he managed to a smile. “It’ll take more than a minute. Michelle likes to get her welcome’s worth before letting one go.”

Jheren grunted, sulking toward the hearth. The pajarita bird in his hand fluttered once, paper wings catching the firelight while he lifted a cup of cold ale to his lips to water his patience. He had to admit to being pleasantly surprised when Michelle approached, followed by three young men she had spent the last night and this morning “contracting” to save her friend. Perhaps this mission wouldn’t be the solitary affair he’d anticipated.

Jheren appraised the three men before him. They stood in a straight line, like three trees in a grove, each one with a different type of bark - one dark and rugged, the other scaled and papery, and the last one rough and knotted, but all sharing the same sturdy trunk. Their faces were a mix of determination and eagerness, like soldiers ready to go into battle, and their eyes shone with the thrill of the adventure that awaited them. That eagerness betrayed their inexperience.

He examined the weapons they carried to determine what to do with them. A battle-axe was in the hands of the maple, who introduced himself as Gerald. The birch-skinned boy held a long bow, and by his mismatched forearms, Jheren felt relief that he was well practiced at least, which would make it less likely he’d be shot in the ass. Jheren didn’t catch his name, as calling him Birch fit him too well. The oak was brutish and ugly now that Michelle wasn’t hiding its face, and looked like he’d lost more fights than he’d won by the reshaping of his face. He had a hatchet and a long skinning knife strapped on either side of his belt, but his heavy fists looked like the weapons he was most familiar with.

“The hero Jheren, in the flesh. The way Merrick talked about you, I thought you’d be a giant,” the big oaf smiled, exposing a broken tooth, as he extended one of his bear hands. “Name’s Amos, it’s an honor to meet you, sir, and to fight beside you.”

Jheren clasped Amos's calloused palm, feeling the strength behind it. The man's eyes held no fear—just the clear gaze of someone who'd already accepted whatever might come. Jheren nodded to Gerald, whose battle-axe gleamed with fresh oil, then to Birch, who merely adjusted his quiver and looked away. The hourglass on the mantle caught Jheren's attention—sand trickling through the narrow passage, already past the third notch that marked midday. Jheren cleared his throat and leaned forward, explaining their goal as the three men drew closer.

“We leave here on foot; horses will just slow us down. The way to the ruins from here is half climb and half run if we hope to stop them by sunset. We’ll need to hurry and catch our wind when we get there,” he held up the paper bird. “This will lead us to where Merrick is waiting. I won’t slow down for anyone, so if you aren’t quick and careful enough not to twist an ankle or fall behind, you’ll be left behind in the crags. I don’t know their numbers, but...”

Amos interrupted, “More than a dozen, less than twenty. Merrick had their tracks when they left here with the girl. He’ll have the exact count when we get there for sure.”

Jheren nodded, “Okay then, there’s five of us, counting Merrick, so it’s three or four to one. That’s better than I worried. Birch, you’ll post up where Merrick puts you, and make your shots count.”

The young man nodded and didn’t correct him. Jheren didn’t know if he liked the new name or was too easygoing to correct him.

He spoke to Amos and Gerald, “We’ll figure out the rest when we get there, but for now, plan on sticking with me and watching my flanks while we cut through to their shaman. Then all we need to do is kill them all and survive to tell the tale.”

“And bring Ellie back alive,” Birch reminds them.

***

Birch’s reminder sits with Jheren all the way out of the inn yard, through the sodden pastures, and up into the first switchbacks overlooking the valley of Farholde. They push themselves hard, the cold air thickening in their chests, boots and greaves caked with black mud. The paper bird flits ahead, always just out of reach, dancing at every new fork in the trail or ridge of scree, then pausing, wings trembling, for the party to catch up. After the first hour, Birch trails even Gerald and Amos, breath coming in wet gasps. The kid is out of shape, or maybe just not used to running for his life before lunch.

The path narrows to a ledge where the wind turns savage. Jheren slows, feeling the burn in his legs, and hears the others shuffling up behind him. Above, the escarpment is veined with vines and dangling roots, while the rock at the face of it shales and crumbles in places. Jheren tests the rock with his boot and finds it solid enough if you trust it, and he has little choice but to. He hauls himself up, and the others follow, hands raw and clumsy, boots scraping for purchase. Gerald is loud about it, cursing at the cold and the loose stone as if that might shame the mountain into holding steady. Birch, setting his jaw, climbs anyway.

Halfway up, a jut of shale shears off under Birch’s weight, and he slides, hip slamming into the face of the cliff. For a suspended moment, the kid hangs, fingers scrabbling at a root that wouldn't hold a rabbit, his bow spinning out and tumbling down the slope. Gerald, already above him, drops his axe and grabs Birch’s wrist with a grunt that’s pure reflex. The momentum nearly pulls them both off the side, but Amos and Jheren work together to grab hold of Gerald, straining to pull them all up.

Far below, the archer’s bow and warrior’s axe lie useless. Jheren looks to the three men, cursing bad luck under his breath. He knows that every delay works against them, but his chances are far greater if he has armed companions.

“Wait here,” he tells them, and wastes no time in deciding to climb back down for the lost gear.

“I’m so fuckin’ sorry,” Birch looks crestfallen, but Jheren is already scrambling down the cliff. “Thanks Gerald, you saved my life.”

“Don’t mention it,” Gerald says as he stares down at the quick-moving hero. “We should have brought a rope.”

Amos chuckles, “We should have brought dinner, but lighter is faster.”

“It isn’t now,” Gerald states.

“Catch your breath, boys. We’ll be running harder to make up the time when he gets back up here.” Amos stays at the ready, watching the deepening woods and hills for trouble.

When Jheren returns after an hour of climbing up and down the cliffside, he takes a moment to lie on his back and gasp for fresh air while staring up through the canopy of leaves at the evening sky. The damn bird has chosen a straight path to Merrick, and if he’d thought about the fact that he wasn’t choosing the quickest route as much as he was being **** down the shortest, he would have brought a damn rope. That mistake could have cost Birch his life, and he deeply regretted it. It had cost him time and energy that he didn’t have to waste, regardless. He waits there just long enough for his heart to stop hammering in his chest before rising and shaking it off. Nothing to do but move forward, and race the setting sun.

The four men trudge quickly up the remaining slope, no longer speaking except to spit curses at their own feet. Every muscle in Jheren’s body has gone to furnace iron, his thoughts pared down to the drumbeat of his breath and the grim thought of how much more the men with him can take before they give out. The paper bird waits on a broken branch, framed by the sun on the horizon, shivering as if eager for their exhaustion to end, then dives into a stand of blue spruce with an iridescent flick.

The trees grow dense, then suddenly fall away to reveal the black scab of fire where the grass and vines have been burned back from the ancient henge. The stones stand in perfect negative: a congregation of giants, misshapen and pockmarked, hunched in a circle that drinks the last of the day’s light. Jheren blinks sweat from his eyes, scanning the perimeter. The air holds a coppery tang, the stink of predator musk and distant rot.

Merrick pulls him down into the branches of the spruce before he reveals himself to the party below. A pair of orcs guard the entrance to the ruins themselves, distracted by the boredom of watching trees wave in the wind.

Merrick’s orcish blood was diluted by two generations of human ancestors, leaving him with only a green tarnish to bronze skin and a slight point to his ears. His teeth were vaguely feral, with pointed canines rather than tusks, but he rarely bared those fangs. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with rugged features. He kept his dark hair pulled back into a tight bun, making all of him coiled with tension and readiness. His grey eyes flickered with quick intelligence as he took note of Jheren, his allies, and the time remaining.

“I was beginning to believe that I’d be witness to catastrophe alone,” he spoke softly, keeping his stealth in the overlook he’d claimed.

Gerald collapsed behind them, prompting a glare from Merrick at the sound. Without a word, Merrick guided the four men back to the other side of the thick stand of spruce so they could make a quick plan.

“I wish I could tell you that they’ll wait until midnight, but from what I’ve seen, they look like they’re getting ready to start soon. Weird thing is, Jheren, it’s a human wizard down there calling the shots.”

“What about the girl?” Gerald asks.

“She’s definitely been prepared for sacrifice. They’ve spent most of the day giving her wine, berries, and honey. She’s been cleansed and dressed in fine linen. None of it indicates this ends well for her,” Merrick tells them.

“As if being kidnapped and dragged here didn’t imply that already,” Amos reminds them.

Jheren turns to the three of them and says, “Saving the girl will be a bonus. We must stop the ritual, no matter what. If they are using her to bring Lilith into this world, we have to stop them. No. Matter. What. This isn’t a rescue mission.”

The mood shifted as the men drew lines on the forest floor with swift strokes of an arrow borrowed from Birch’s quiver. Plans were made. Curses swore. Then they resigned to the simple truth. Jheren would take the lead, and the others would try to keep him and themselves alive. Rising as one, the five warriors left behind a scratched-out strategy in the dirt and readied their weapons.

***

The sky was painted red and gold by the last rays of the setting sun, with the few clouds now purple and red as bruised flesh. Two arrows sailed in parallel towards the ruins, landing with successive thuds into the cheek of one and the neck of the other orc guarding the opening. Jheren sprinted from the wood line towards the dying orcs, finishing off the one that clutched at a throat which fountained crimson with a passing strike from Mystara. Behind him, Gerald and Amos followed. Further back, Merrick and Birch moved to reposition.

Jheren knew that for the next two minutes, the archers would lose sight of them, unable to provide support. The layout of the ruins within was known to them, but the positions of the cultists invoking Lilith weren’t. The most that could be assumed was that the center of the black stone henge, around which the ruined temple to Lilith had been built, would be the center of the ritual. Whatever asshole was behind this would be there.

Immediately inside the ruins, it all went wrong. Glyphs had been prepared at the passageway for the arrival of interlopers. Jheren had just enough time to raise his left hand and shield them from a blast of magic lightning.

“Tuitio!” he shouted. He held Mystara before him, alongside his outstretched hand, his thumb and ring finger touching while the rest pointed skywards. Gerald and Amos were still far enough back not to be caught in the original arcs of blue plasma, but had to dive outside the opening as the sparks continued and expanded. A sphere of amber triangles surrounded Jheren while he held his ground, surrounded by crackling electric ****.

The continual crackling and blinding lightning flashes finally ended as darkness consumed the ruins and the mountains swallowed the sun. Jheren dropped the shield, sidestepping a bolt that flew past him in the dark. He looked back briefly.

“You guys coming?” Jheren tossed a quick dagger in the direction the bolt had come from. The sound of its wet impact with soft flesh was followed by a goblin’s dying whimper.

Amos and Gerald spurred themselves to action, scrambling from their cowering to reclaim their courage and follow Jheren forward into the chamber within. They could hear the rhythm of the rite ahead—chanting in a human tongue, but stretched, almost sung, into a serpentine cadence. Someone’s trying to make sense of it, maybe learn it, but the vowels stick in the speaker’s mouth. Jheren felt little relief that an amateur was trying to end the world.

They moved out of the vestibule and went deeper in. The silver flash of Mystara flashed ahead, cutting down two more goblins. Amos moved quickly behind Jheren, cutting off a charging orc that emerged from an alcove to the right. He barrelled into the savage, coming in under the serrated sword the orc was swinging down. His shoulder collided with his enemy’s chest as he wrapped him up into a diving tackle. As the orc landed on his back, still trying to position his blade arm in a way that wasn’t awkwardly trapped by the weight of the burly ranger, Amos had his skinning knife in hand, driving it repeatedly between the orc’s ribs until all struggling ceased.

He rolled off the orc to see that Gerald had followed Jheren past him. Standing quickly, he turned to follow when shadows swallowed the world around him. In the magical darkness, Amos whirled, swinging his fists at echoes until an unseen axe split his head from crown to nose.

In the stone chamber at the center of the henge, torches burn blue, casting the supplicant shadows against the weathered floor. They move in a circle, seven in number, each cloaked and hooded. At the center, held fast by bindings and too much wine on a smooth black stone altar, was the girl Ellie, her hair matted, her eyes rolling in her skull with fever and terror. Stars shone too brightly through the hypaethros. The roofless opening revealed what appeared to be an overly colorful and seemingly alien starscape.

The chanting reached a crescendo as Jheren charged in.

“Ambustio!” He shouted, waving his off hand furiously as he called forth a torrent of flames.

Several acolytes were immolated at once. Gerald noticed with some fear that they continued to chant as they burned, their voices pitched with terrible pain. As Jheren moved swiftly past them, Gerald watched the burning acolytes turn to face him. They charged mindlessly at the warrior, who felt no guilt as he cut them down with his axe, ending their suffering and insanity.

Gerald doesn’t have time to take in the full horror of the burning cultists before arrows begin to thud into the acolytes from above. Birch and Merrick, somehow already on the collapsed gallery that rings the chamber, fire down with precision. Birch’s first shaft takes a hooded human in the mouth, pinning tongue to palate. The man’s chant ends with a wet rattle as he topples over. Merrick’s arrow slips under another cultist’s arm and nestles in his ribs; the figure spins, a cartoonish marionette, before crumpling without drama.

“Jheren!” Merrick’s voice cuts through the smoke and shrieks. “The altar!”

Jheren charges the magician, calling on Mystara’s latent power for a sudden burst of speed that closed the final dozen steps in a flash of silver light, driving the blade through the center of the man’s chest before his spectral afterimage fades yards behind him.

“You’re too... too... late,” the dying wizard sputters.

He clutches at Jheren’s sword arm to hold himself upright long enough to see a sudden blast of energy that strikes down from the heavens onto the altar. His eyes widen with wonder before finally glazing over in ****. Jheren pries the dead man’s hand off of him and turns to the sound of Ellie’s shrill scream as she is burned alive in a pillar of light. Veins of light spread outward along the ground to the standing stones of the ancient henge and the columns of the temple, rising to cause the stone to glow golden.

Ellie’s **** came mercifully quick, but with her silence came the sounds of other screams. Birch and Merrick both cried out from their vantage points atop the temple walls. They were **** to jump or fall from the energized stone, and whether they reacted quickly enough to make the choice or not, the result was the same. Neither stuck the landing; both men hit the ground with the sound of snapping bones. They could only groan as Gerald and Jheren rushed to save them from the acolytes who were moving to finish off the snipers.

Merrick, favoring a leg bent wrong at the knee, grabs Birch by the belt and scrabbles them out of a cultist’s path, then shoves his knife up to the hilt beneath the thing’s ribs. Birch, his arm clearly broken and dangling, props himself against a toppled altar stone and draws an arrow with his teeth. He manages to get off a weak shot into the chest of an approaching goblin. The arrow doesn’t sink in deep enough to be a killing shot, and the wounded goblin manages to pounce on him, swinging a kukri down on Birch again and again until Merrick manages to grab the arrow and drive it deep enough to fell the creature.

Birch twitches and spasms, bleeding out with a look of surprise still on his face. Merrick, distracted with a desire to save his new comrade somehow, barely feels the bolt that ends him. Birch breathes his last, looking up at Merrick, staring at the bolt head jutting from the ranger’s mouth.

Gerald cleaves the goblin crossbowman too late to stop him from taking out Merrick. Then he is the next to die. Even as he hews through the acolyte with another, angrier, backhand slash, a mad, charred orcish acolyte clamps onto him from behind, powerful and wiry arms pin Gerald’s axe to his side as he thrashes, bellowing. The cultist gnaws at his neck with such fierce hunger that the warrior’s pulse paints the floor in an arc. The grip does not slacken, not even as Jheren severs the acolyte at the waist; Gerald staggers, blood streaming from mouth and throat, then falls with the upper half of the corpse still fused to his back by jaw and madness.

Jheren rotates, as graceful as a pirouette, as alert as a spider in the center of a deadly web. At the altar, a goblin was pulling the collar that Ellie had worn from the ashes that were once her. The goblin paused, meeting Jheren’s gaze, then spoke.

“I’ll just be taking this and leaving, if that’s alright with you.” His voice was grating and rough. Jheren was glad that he also sounded frightened.

“Fulmen!” Jheren went for overkill, sending a searing bolt of lightning directly at the goblin.

The goblin jerked in instinct, bringing up his hands and the collar to shield himself in what should have been vain. Yet the lightning faded into a pitiful shower of sparks when it struck the collar, surprising both of them.

“Goresh, HELP!” The goblin cried out, diving behind the altar and out of Jheren’s sight.

Jheren head swiveled to find whoever the goblin had called out to while taking a few steps forward. He saw the approaching orc, larger than the others he had fought today, and wondered where he had been hiding all this time.

“Blind him, Hobbs,” the orc grumbled as his knuckles cracked while he adjusted his grip on a great axe.

Shadows fell around Jheren, and he immediately called on Mystara to avoid the darkness spell. Jheren flashed towards the orc, coming just short of the distance needed to take him down in the move. The axe and Mystara clashed with a clear ringing sound when the two of them engaged in battle.

Goresh’s next swing is brutal, a full-arced chop that would have split a wagon pole, but Jheren is already inside it, feeling the wind sing past his ear as he ducks and rolls, catching the edge of the blow across his pauldron. Sparks and pain, but nothing breaks. The orc’s arms are like iron bands, his stench thick and animal as he presses the attack. Each time Jheren pivots or slides away, Goresh adapts, less reckless, more calculating than the average brute. The two trade blows so close that the sweat and blood from Goresh’s chest spatters Jheren’s cheek.

Mystara’s blade is alive in his hands, its keen silver edge chipping against the haft of the axe in a ballet of ****. Jheren can’t get a clean line on the orc’s torso, so he shifts—targets the wrists, the ankles, the inside of the thigh, anything that will give him a killing wound. Jheren feels like he’s at his limit. The days' physical and emotional tolls are weighing him down. The orc’s footwork is ugly and fast, like a river breaking through a dam when he pushes Jheren back a step. Jheren feels he can win this, but the orc isn’t giving him the time he needs to get a spell off. And he needs to last long enough for Mystara to be ready for another flash step.

But the goblin wants none of this. Jheren glimpses him, low as a lizard, darting up the altar’s backside with Ellie’s collar clamped in his teeth like a dog with a bone. Hobbs is watching the duel with a dangerous cunning, waiting for an opportunity. Goresh wants to hold Jheren’s focus, and Jheren sees the trap. When Hobbs pounces, Jheren is ready, leaping away from Goresh in what looks like a coward’s retreat to swing Mystara out at the goblin.

He had planned to turn his full focus on the orc when the goblin had been dealt with, but Mystara sliced only air. The goblin had rolled away, tossing the collar like a discus to Jheren. Jheren caught the collar in his off hand, then realized the mistake when it came alive in his grasp. The collar twisted in his hand like a living thing and began snaking around his wrist as it started pulling out of grip and up his arm. Jheren couldn’t focus on it, as Goresh was already on him again, forcing him to parry with Mystara.

He needed just a few more seconds, but the collar was climbing his arm now while he desperately tried to keep the orc from overpowering him. He was a heartbeat away from flashing past Goresh and taking the orc’s head off with Mystara when the collar coiled around his neck and snapped closed. Jheren suddenly couldn’t breathe. He felt like his face was swelling from the blood trapped in his head as he staggered, his strength fading.

Jheren tried to lift Mystara against the orc, who was standing there looking at him with obvious surprise. His trusted blade slipped from his grasp and fell. Before it hit the ground, Jheren was also falling, pain flooding every cell in his body, before his consciousness faded.