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By Root 402 0

his blade hissing through the air. She dodged it—barely. The warrior whirled, his long white braid whipping through the air as he turned and slashed again. This blow the priestess tried to parry, but the warrior’s sword sliced her blade off at the hilt. The priestess threw what remained aside and tried to cast a spell, but even as her lips shaped the first word of her prayer, the enormous black sword slashed straight down, cleaving through her body from head to groin. One half of the body toppled to the ground at once. The other half wavered a moment before falling. As Q’arlynd watched, both halves blackened then crumbled like soot. Soon all that was left was the woman’s boots and armor, surrounded by a pool of rapidly blackening blood. This began to bubble, resolving itself into a foul slick of tiny spiders. The warrior dipped the point of his sword into them, and they scuttled up its blade. They disappeared into the steel, as if absorbed.

Q’arlynd realized he was just standing there, staring. Suddenly coming to his senses, he rendered himself invisible a heartbeat before the warrior turned.

The warrior stared in Q’arlynd’s direction. He swung his sword in a slow arc until its point was aimed directly at Q’arlynd. The invisibility Q’arlynd had cloaked himself in vanished. He fumbled for his spell components, cursing his shaking hands. He was a battle mage, damn it. He’d faced down powerful enemies before. What in the Abyss was it about this warrior that made him so unnerving?

The eyes, Q’arlynd thought. Those pupils looked like spiders crawling around on the warrior’s eyeballs. It felt as though they were about to scuttle straight into Q’arlynd’s soul.

The warrior smiled.

Just as Q’arlynd finally found the spell components he’d been groping for, a drider called out to the warrior from overhead. “This way!” it shouted. “Another one that’s too strong for us.”

Shouldering the two-handed sword, the warrior strode away in the direction the drider had indicated, leaving Q’arlynd behind.

Q’arlynd closed his eyes and shivered. The warrior had let him go.

Why?

It took Q’arlynd several moments to regain his composure. When he had, he continued through the forest—less brazenly this time, constantly glancing over his shoulder for any sign of the spider-eyed warrior. He’d almost forgotten that he’d been looking for Leliana when he suddenly spotted her just ahead. She was on her own, surrounded by three driders, all with scarred faces.

He reached into the pocket of his piwafwi then hesitated. No one else was around, and it looked as though Leliana would be fighting on her own. He decided to wait and see what happened. If the driders killed her, well and good. It would save him the trouble of doing something that a truth spell might later reveal.

He stepped back behind a tree, out of sight, and settled in to watch, arms folded across his chest.

Even though it was three against one, Leliana put up a good fight, but then a fourth drider pounced on her from above, dropping swiftly out of a cloud of darkness. The priestess smashed it aside with her sword, but one of the other three driders leaped forward and sank its fangs into her thigh, just below the hem of her chain mail. She cried out but didn’t immediately fall—possibly she had some magical protection against poison. Then the drider tore its fangs free of her flesh. Blood sprayed from the wound, splashing a tree several paces away. The bite had opened an artery. Leliana crumpled, her face ashen gray.

That was it then. The driders had done the job for Q’arlynd, just as he’d hoped.

Three of the driders levitated away from the body and scurried off into the treetops. The fourth, however, lingered. From behind the tree, Q’arlynd aimed his fur-wrapped rod at the creature and spoke a word, hurling a lightning bolt at it. The drider never saw it coming. The bolt struck the back of its head, blasting it from the creature’s body. Spider legs crumpled beneath a smoking corpse.

Q’arlynd thought he heard movement in the woods behind him then. It was difficult to tell, with all of