Total Word Count: 29,566

Rhoa shifted the weight of the sprakhide chest, wishing she could snatch off her glove to find whatever nasty, icy, stinging thing had gotten into the Keeper's suit.

It hadn't been more than a vague discomfort at first, a nagging itch that started up beneath the cuff of her left sleeve while she climbed the stairwell to the third floor of the Keep. By the time she had jogged across to the drawbridge exit, though, the discomfort had turned into a definite irritation. Now, halfway over the drawbridge, it had grown to a fierce, freezing burn, like shards of ice held too long against her skin. She bared her teeth and kept going, her eyes on the pillared platform at the end.

Ten more yards. Only ten more yards.

The chest thumped against the fronts of her thighs with every step, making her stride awkward and uneven, and still that frigid burning in her left arm intensified, sliding sharp along her veins.

When she reached the entryway platform built into the tower, she nearly dropped the chest as she fumbled for the greatkey at her belt, her left arm oddly weak. Hissing curses beneath her breath, she managed to fit the key to the lockplate.

As she did, she caught sight of something on the palm of her left glove.

For a split-second, she went absolutely still, staring at her hand. In the monochrome vision of the helmet, it looked like an ink stain about the size of a coin. An ink stain that moved, the edges wavering, stretching, sending out tiny, mossy runners across the smooth surface of the leather.

Unbidden, a memory of Gran came to mind, knobby fingers held before her mouth like fangs; then Old Marjan's lips stretching wide and black as pitch. A stab of fear jolted through her chest, snagging in her throat.

I have seen what's left of a human after the Rot has taken over.

Rhoa swallowed hard.

Then she turned the key in the lock and dragged the ancient door open.

As if that had been some sort of cue, her headache roared to a crescendo, a hundred hammers striking full-bore inside her skull, that blasted hum making itself known. Even with the Keeper's clay holding it out, it surged and rippled around the tower, a deep, bass rumble beneath her feet. Gasping, she staggered into the antechamber, nearly overbalancing before she caught herself. Then she wheeled to her left and began lugging the chest up the stairs, spiraling around the inside of the tower to the prison chamber at the top.

Midway up the first turn, the pain in her arm was nearly unbearable. By the time she reached the landing her breathing was labored, her heart pounding so hard her chest hurt. Legs trembling, head splitting, Rhoa came to a halt and sagged against the wall of the stairwell.

In front of her, the landing opened into a broad room lit by a single, narrow loophole window inset with panes of dark glass. It offered barely enough to see by, but that was the point. There could be no light inside the tower.

The monster was there, locked up inside a colossal cell of dark, dense Keeper's Stone.

She was almost done. All she had to do was get to the door set into the wall.

The freezing fire in her arm sank its teeth into her skin again, meeting bone and sinew this time, and she nearly dropped the chest. Gathering the last of her strength, she crossed the threshold, every movement an extreme effort as she walked to the middle of the upper chamber. The barren walls started spinning, distorting and tilting, and she came to a halt again, lungs straining for air, muscles shaking. With a groan, she closed her eyes. She was quickly running out of time.

She had to be strong.

Pain arced up her arm to her shoulder.

I have seen what's left of a human after the Rot has taken over.

Ice was racing through her blood, now, and her stomach pitched and rolled, the tang of bile rising in her throat. Her head was caught in a vise, pressure building to a blinding pitch, radiating down her spine, through her thighs, into her calves. Her bones were burning up with that awful, deathly cold, but the weight of the sprakhide chest was becoming just a little easier to bear.

Rhoa opened her eyes and lifted her head. If she made it warm, it would make her strong.

The door to the monster's cell was only a few yards away. She drew air into frozen lungs and took a step, then another, grasping at that newfound thread of strength.

Was this what it had been like for Phane?

It doesn't kill all of its victims, some it only influences, some it twists into things that aren't human anymore.

The Vanguard was going to hate her for what she was about to do – what she was about to become.

He would also be alive.

Carefully, she placed the chest on the table to the left of the stone door. Then she took the smaller key off her belt and unlocked the chest.

Her fingers were shaking.

Thirteen vials lay in the velvet-cushioned interior, the glass of the Keeper's helmet rendering them in palest silver instead of gold. Beside the vials were two jet-black jars with silver lids embossed with skulls, alkali salts in one, bitter reagent in the other, a measure made of bone between them.

Rhoa dragged in another agonized breath. There still wasn't enough air, but it didn't seem to matter. She could move.

She unlatched the iron trapdoor set into the stone wall, revealing three iron drawers, then pulled the largest bottom drawer open. Unstopping each vial of poison, she emptied them one by one into the glass reagent jar inside the drawer. All of them. There wasn't enough for a second dose if she didn't get this right.

She paused.

The poison didn't look the way it should. It was fizzing. It didn't look silver anymore, either. She let out a breath when those telltale inky tendrils began snaking up the sides of the jar.

There were Rot spores in the Keeper's poison.

For a heartbeat she stood there staring at it. Then she peered down at her left hand. The ink stain was three finger-widths across, now, and had burnt all the way through her left glove. The skin beneath was leached of color, the veins too dark, as if her blood ran black.

Would the alchemy even work if the poison was contaminated?

I have seen what's left of a human after the Rot has taken over.

The hum increased, becoming a gritty roll of thunder that seemed to rise from somewhere directly below the tower.

Glancing around, she shook her head. She didn't have a choice. The Warmoon was cresting. If she was too late, there would be no holding that thing in there. Forcing herself to move faster, she closed the drawer and opened the one above it. Two scoops of alkali salts went into the little wooden bowl in the drawer. She closed that one. Opened the top drawer. Tapped one level scoop of bitter reagent into the bowl. Closed the drawer. Then she pulled out the sliding panels in the bottom of the two top drawers, dropping first the salts, then the bitter reagent into the jar.

There was a dull, ominous crunch under her feet, as if huge stones were striking each other.

She slammed the iron door shut, latched it, and started counting. One, two, three —

Another thud, followed by two more, and then a fourth, syncopated like a gigantic heartbeat.

— Four. Five. She pulled the lever that raised the trapdoor on the other side of the wall, then reached out with numb fingers and flipped open the iron shutters above the drawer to make sure the frothing, deadly contents of the jar had been released into the monster's cell.

Nothing in all of her training prepared her for what she saw through the viewing pane.

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