Father Superior Bessik

"Please, Perinor, you must see that your movement has been defeated," I said, a silent prayer for a peaceful resolution continuing without cessation in my heart. "I can feel darkness washing off you in waves. The cure I have brought from Circepal can help you—and all the infected—but only if you turn from violence!"

"You were always a fool, Bessik," Perinor hissed. "The Gift of Sethos is only the spearhead of Dragoskala's doom. The city stands all but defenseless. Even now, a flotilla of Migarian soldiers is landing to the south, and will march in on the Skale Road by dawn. The suns will rise on a new power in Dollif and its people will bow henceforth before Migar and the Scarlet Brotherhood!"

"Fortunately, you are mistaken," Sir Yadinal said almost casually, the arrow held steady near his cheek as he spoke. "Human forces could never avoid High Lady Glandessa's tireless watch. We spotted your Migarians as they attempted to cross Paeton County to the Morning River. While I escorted Superior Bessik here, the High Lady's forces began systematically culling their numbers. If anyone marches on the city now, it would be my lady with reinforcements.

The tilwenic knight spoke truly. He had overtaken me on the Smokewood Road with news of the invasion. Together we discovered the dire plight of the city itself and drove our weary mounts directly to the palace to lend aid. It was a small vanity to assume the two of us could make a difference, but with the holy cure I brought from Circepal and Sir Yadinal's legendary archery, it was not impossible.

"A diversion!" Perinor shouted, teeth clacking together in barely contained rage. "My allies crossed the border farther north, near the narrows of Schilberg. They will come nowhere near Paeton." King Roggarth jerked onto his toes to avoid the traitorous priest's dangerous gestures.

"Believe what you like," the tilwen knight continued, "Say the word and I shall end this, father. The king is in no danger."

"Do it, good Sir Yadinal," the king said bravely, "my life is unimportant so long as my heir and my city are safe."

"Your heir..." Perinor crooned with a toothy grin. "The queen was only too happy to have a ranking member of the clergy look in on your son in his nursery on such a troubled night."

"No!" the king cried.

"It is fortunate I did, too, for I was able to call her attention to a vicious wound that had escaped his nursemaid's notice! Even now, he is receiving aid from your hospitalers for an odd bite that won't heal..."

"One preserve!" I prayed.

"My son!" the king gasped, "kill this wretch!" He tried to shove away from Perinor, but the priest held him fast, pulling the king closer and grinning cruelly behind the monarch's salted, wavy hair. It was an impossible shot from twenty paces.

"No!" I cried, as the arrow left Sir Yadinal's bow.

The tilwenic knight did not hesitate.

His arrow flew like a ray, piercing his target's eye. The king pulled free as Perinor fell, but not before the falling sword dragged a thin red line across his throat.

"Secure the king!" Toldek's resonant voice boomed, spurring the stunned company into motion.

I dashed forward, the glow of God's healing power already flowing through me, filling me with his euphoric sense of love and warmth. The wizards followed close behind and held King Roggarth steady as I laid hands on his wound.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," the king protested, waving us away. "A scratch as the blade pulled away from my skin. There are many casualties here who need your healing, Father Bessik, and you must see to my son!"

Nevertheless, the scratch closed rapidly, before I rounded on the tilwen archer in righteous indignation.

"You took a great risk with our monarch's life!" I scolded, trailing off as a shudder of relief overwhelmed me. "If you had missed..."

"The Order of The Hand often cites scripture when taking decisive action in defense of the weak and innocent," the Tilwen knight said, moving to check Perinor's body. "I thought it poetic that such a measure was appropriate to remove The Hand's Lord Commander?"

Perinor's eye had exploded around the arrow shaft, a black ooze slowly spreading across the right side of his face. His fingers and feet were twitching, but it was surely too late to save him, even with healing.

"The vine that bears no fruit must be cut away so that the vine which bears fruit might bear more abundantly," I quoted, sadly. Perinor had always been zealous, true, but his words and deeds had never hinted at the blackness in his soul. "But 'Only One knows the heart of a man,' " I added with another quotation.

"You need not have worried," another tilwen voice chimed in behind us, and we turned to see Sir Pertuli Ill'Enniniess staggering forward, dragging one leg as he leaned heavily on a rough-looking female tilwen with horrendous bruising about her neck. Ill'Enniniess' armor was so battered it was nearly concave, and she dragged a wickedly curved foreign blade on the ground behind her as if, even now, she was unwilling to shun the potential for violence. "Yadinal never misses," Pertuli continued. "It is but one of his many infuriating qualities."

"Silaree goss rilli neava, pathin," Sir Yadinal smiled, a curl tugging gently at one corner of his habitually stoic visage. "And yours is the uncanny ability to find tilwenna'i on your arm under any circumstance."

"But Sir Pertuli, you and your lady are wounded!" I cried, ignoring the raspy warning growl the woman directed at her kinsman. "Come, sit so I can heal you!"

For one blissful moment, as I concentrated on healing my tilwen friends, and Pertuli and Yadinal greeted one another like long lost brothers, I was thankful that the fight was over and recovery could begin. It would take some time when I was better rested to heal them fully, but soon Pertuli could stand on his own and his friend was breathing more easily.

Behind me, the wizards were catching one another up to speed on the night's events.

"Twenty four by my count," said Toldek Redfeather. "Still two short of the foretold number..."

There was a rumble, as of a large broken structure settling, somewhere in the distance.

"Master Toldek!" The newly arrived Yenaist Wizard exclaimed into the lull. "In the excitement, I have only just remembered..."

"Can it wait?" Toldek frowned, at a sudden commotion from outside the walls. "It sounds like something requires our attention."

"It may be relevant," the wizard said excitedly. "I encountered an odd demonic hybrid near the cathedral. My focus had run dry and as much as I wanted to study the creature, I was powerless, and thought it best to come here. Radiance In the area is thin and drained as well..."

"I have felt that too," Toldek agreed. "It will begin to replenish at daybreak."

I tuned the wizards out. Once they began talking about monsters, foci and radiance, I wasn't interested. I turned back to Pertuli Ill'Enniniess.

"Better?" I asked.

"Much, thank thee," the tilwen nodded, "Though I fear there are parts of me that will hurt for weeks to come."

"Sparking serves ya right," the lady said, "Head to toe in gods-damned bloody silver sparking armor and ya can't handle a fat dwarf-lizard who hadn't even puked scaly? Where'd ya get that shiny kit from, anyway?"

I blanched mutely at her language, dismayed that such a grotesque outpouring of profanity could be strung together by such delicate lips. As if the pagan thunder god she'd invoked was voicing his displeasure, there was another crash outside the walls nearby.

"Excuse me?" Pertuli asked, rounding on her with an indignant wince. "I seem to recall him dragging you into the courtyard, hair first. I was saving you!"

"Is Lord Clasicant leading men elsewhere?" I interrupted, trying to change the subject before the lovers' quarrel got out of hand. "I assumed I would find him with you, Sir Pertuli."

Both rounded on me, but suddenly Pertuli's eyes went very large with surprise. The woman said nothing but surged forward, her sword swinging at my head. It wasn't the reaction I was expecting.

"He-elp!" I cried, fearing murder, as several people shouted "Look out!"

There was a metallic clash as her scimitar turned a second sword away, a hair's width from my throat.

I collapsed, arms raised in terror. Over me, a newly risen Perinor towered, a reptilian smirk splitting his face and an arrow still protruding from one eye and the back of his head.

"He's cursed!" I yelped, scooting away on my back like a crab, one hand clutching at my—thankfully whole—throat.

"Ya think?" the woman growled. Holding her scimitar with both hands, she struggled against the blade Perinor held casually in one. "These scaly bastards just won't stay dead!"

Perinor whisked his sword away and bashed her aside with the force of his return blow. Pertuli dove at his sword arm, but the cursed priest shoved him away as if he were a child.

Perinor pulled the arrow from his head and came after me, even as two more shafts bloomed from his chest. Either shot would have killed a normal man instantly, but the former lord commander had two beating hearts, now.

"There's still time!" I cried, remembering myself, and summoned God's healing glow to my outstretched hands. I was Perinor's only hope. "You must let me cure you before you change fully!"

"Bleeding heart," Perinor spat, yanking the arrows contemptuously from his chest one at a time in gouts of black ooze. As each left his body, black scales closed in under the skin. It was very close to emerging. "The Gift of Sethos is not one to be put aside. I see that now. It has brought me back from death twice now, and I, for one, willingly embrace such power!"

Suddenly Perinor was transforming, and I fell to my knees with a sob of frustration. "No!" I cried. While there is life there is hope. For salvation; for forgiveness. The former priest had thrown it all away in the mad belief that power meant anything.

His face split, revealing rows of long, fang-like teeth. His arms and legs grew long and clawed. It was nothing like anything I had ever seen, even amid the recent horrors of Circepal City. The demon didn't emerge to destroy the man... the man became the demon.

"What fresh hell is this?" I groaned.

"We need silver!" Yadinal shouted, putting two more arrows into Perinor's chest.

"Aim for his eyes!" Pertuli shouted, hefting a longsword from a fallen soldier nearby. "It slowed him down last time!"

"That was before... this," the tilwenna groaned, rolling to her feet and gesturing with bewilderment at what was going on with Perinor's transformation, "but I've got yer silver right here!"

Perinor's blade intercepted the silver scimitar with impossible speed, and he kicked her roughly in the belly, so she rolled over and over backwards across the courtyard.

"Foolish woman," he laughed, "you may have fought a number of pain-ridden villagers and street thugs in demonic form, but I have been a professional killer for the Church and the Scarlet Brotherhood my entire life. With the Gift of Sethos, I am unstoppable." His voice had a rasping, sibilant quality that made my skin crawl, even before I understood the horror of what he was saying.

King Roggarth, monarch of the realm and the only one present besides Toldek with any serenity, raised an ornate, bejeweled thumb wand.

"I beg to differ," he said in a booming voice used to addressing thousands of people, and blasted Perinor with four quick bolts of green energy from a pace away. Perinor staggered, howling. The king fell like a stone, completely drained.

"Majesty!" Yadinal gasped, racing forward to the king's side. "Four bolts—are you mad?"

The king was unresponsive. His attack had done a great deal of damage that wasn't healing, but it wasn't enough. Perinor was already rising, and with four smoking wounds in his chest, looked furious. He lurched toward Yadinal and the fallen king, claws extended and hate in his eyes.

Taking up my silver Heart of One pendant, I called into being the immobilization spell I used at Chateau Dumon against the Faranado boy a month prior. In that fight my apprentices and I working in tandem were able to hold the transformed Paolo Faranado fast. I lost one apprentice in that fight, and another to a demon in Circepal City.

Alone, I only hoped to slow the creature, but God is the source of our hope. As his power engulfed Perinor, the monster's movement slowed to a crawl while Sir Yadinal dragged King Roggarth away.

As willing as my spirit was, I had been tested by a week's hard ride without real food or sleep, stresses beyond number, and so much healing that my strength immediately began to give way. When the Palace Wall shattered nearby, my prayer had already begun to falter. There was a sudden explosion of masonry and debris, and a stone struck the side of my face. My spell winked out, and I fell heavily, wracked by pain.

"By Yenah, it followed me!" the foreign wizard shouted somewhere behind me. Though my vision was blurred, whether by my wound or the haze of billowing dust and debris around me, I looked to the wreckage and saw another long, lean form sporting talons and teeth, studying us with cold red eyes.

"One preserve us!" I groaned. "Not another one!"