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In the other passage, Biri-Daar and Lucan were hewing their way through the remaining orcs. The rest of the party joined them and together they punched into the chamber at the heart of the orcs’ lair … just as the surviving orcs scattered and a pair of ogres appeared, flanking a larger orc with ritualized scars surrounding the open socket of the eye he had sacrificed to his god. “Eye of Gruumsh,” Lucan said. “You, orc! Elf here!”

As clumsy a ploy as it was, it worked perfectly. The god of the elves, Corellon, had gouged the eye from the orc patron Gruumsh. The orcs who mimicked that wound nurtured a hatred of elves and all things elven.

The Eye of Gruumsh said something in Orcish and the ogres lumbered forward, both to protect it and to destroy the elf interloper. Biri-Daar met one of them head on, stepping inside the looping swing of its morningstar and opening its guts with a hooked thrust. The other ogre swatted Lucan down to his knees and the Eye of Gruumsh sprang closer for the kill, its battle cry nearly drowning out the dying roars of the gutted ogre. It had its spear raised, its mouth open, its one good eye wide in triumph—until Kithri’s thrown knife flashed across the chamber and struck at an angle up through the roof of its mouth.

Its cry trailed off and the spear thrust drove through Lucan’s shoulder instead of his ribs, the spear head snapping off on the stone floor. Staggering, the Eye of Gruumsh took another blow as a second knife snapped into the hollow of its throat under the jaw. It dropped straight down, still gripping the haft of the broken spear.

Remy and Biri-Daar pressed the remaining ogre. If there were any more orcs about, they had fled into the deeper recesses of the cave. The ogre fought with a fire-hardened wooden club, broken blades hammered into its head. Knowing it was outnumbered, the ogre backed toward an opening in the cave, forcing them to approach it from the front. Its club made a heavy whoosh with every swing, each powerful enough to splinter a row of skulls and fan their brains out across the nearest wall.

Even an ogre’s strength has limits. Biri-Daar, fearless with the strength of her god, pressed near the limit of the club’s range. She timed the swing and the backswing—once, twice. On the third, she stepped inside and jammed her sword up under the ogre’s armpit. The ogre clamped the wounded arm around the dragonborn paladin, crushing her to it in a suffocating embrace. The club dropped; with its free hand, the ogre tore Biri-Daar’s sword free of its flesh and threw it away.

Then Keverel was there, smashing his mace into the arm that held Biri-Daar. With him came Remy, his blade flicking out in search of the vulnerable gaps in the ogre’s hide armor. Iriani protected the rear, destroying the occasional straggling orc as it appeared.

Last, and most lethally, came Kithri, dancing between the ogre’s legs to open the artery on the inside of its thigh. She was fast, and the ogre was terribly wounded—still it was fast for its size, catching her with a spastic kick that smashed her into the wall. She cried out and rolled away as the mortally wounded ogre toppled against the wall above her and slid down, its wounded leg unable to hold its weight and its lifeblood spilling in a thick fall from shoulder and thigh. Remy stepped in again, thrusting deep into the pit of its stomach. It flailed at him, missing, and Biri-Daar fell away from it, fighting free of its grasp as it slid down the wall and died.

Before it had drawn its last breath, Remy vaulted the body and kneeled next to Kithri. Her face was wild with pain, her teeth bared and gritted. When he picked her up to carry her back to Keverel, she cried out again. “Hush,” Lucan said heartlessly, whatever native tact he possessed temporarily driven out by his own wound. “You’ll draw whatever else lives back in these caves.”

Kithri might have said many things. Instead she took his advice, clamping her mouth shut even when Remy laid her down on the hard stone next to