Session 41

The next few days in the sanctum were a frenzy of activity.

Having attuned to the assembled Rod of Law, Brabara could now sense the exact location where Vecna’s ritual was unfolding. When she shared that information with Alustriel, the archmage cursed under her breath.

“Limbo!” Alustriel spat. “Of course he’d choose there.”

“Why?” Brabara asked.

“Limbo is a plane of pure chaos, a roiling soup of impermanent matter and energy,” Alustriel said. “It makes perfect sense he’d choose a place with such fluid states to enact a ritual like this. I’ll need a few days to create a portal stable enough to take us to the location you described.”

“Us?” Xalen said.

“Of course,” Alustriel replied, her tone firmer than they’d ever heard it. “I’m coming with you. I fear we may all be needed to overcome the arch‑lich.”

“That’s good news,” Brabara said. “But we must hurry. I can’t explain it, but the Rod knows Vecna is close to completing the ritual.”

“How long do we have?” Ebyn asked.

Brabara shook her head. “I can’t say exactly, but it’s measured in days, not weeks.”

Using the treasure recovered from the ruined citadel on Pandesmos, the group, with help from Naxa and Vaeve, scoured Sigil for anything that might aid them in what they all knew would be their final confrontation.

Seknafret and Ebyn buried themselves in magical tomes, pushing their abilities to their limits. Brabara sought a shield capable of protecting her from Vecna’s necromantic power. Xalen hunted for potions and enchanted gear that might give them even the slightest edge.

Three days later, Alustriel summoned them to the portal.

“Is it ready?” Brabara asked.

Alustriel nodded. “It is. Gather your gear. It’s time.”

“I need more time,” Ebyn said. “My preparations aren’t complete.”

Brabara shook her head. “We don’t have it. The Rod is telling me the threat to Order is imminent.”

Ebyn’s fists clenched. This was it, the moment he’d been preparing for his entire life, and now that it had arrived, he didn’t feel ready. Had he done enough? Planned enough? Studied enough? Could he do this?

“Fine,” he said at last. “But we need to coordinate a few things. Quartius, as discussed, cast Mind Blank on Seknafret. Then, Brabara, I’ll need you to use the Rod to create another simulacrum so… let’s call him Quintus, can cast the same spell on me.”

“What will that do?” Seknafret asked.

“It will prevent Vecna from dominating or controlling us,” Ebyn said. “Ideally, we’d all have that protection, but we’re out of time. At least with the two of us shielded, Vecna can’t turn our magic against the rest of you.”

Seknafret nodded. “Once that’s done, I’ll bestow Foresight on Xalen, like I did in Pandesmos. We should take every advantage we can.”

The group gathered their gear and completed their final preparations. Spells were cast. Wards were raised. Weapons were checked and rechecked.

Once everything was ready, Brabara gathered the group together and cleared her throat. Nine pairs of eyes turned toward her, and suddenly her mouth felt dry as sand.

“Um… before we do this,” she began, coughing nervously, “I’d just like to say a few words.”

She shifted her weight from foot to foot, looking at each of them in turn.

“We’ve come a long way, the four of us. From the Neverwinter City Watch to… well, here. Sigil.”

A shaky breath.

“We’ve faced more challenges than I can count. We’ve had our share of defeats. But we stood together through all of it.”

Her hand drifted to her swelling belly.

“We should remember the fallen. Tasha. Secondus. Tertius. Quartius. And all the others whose names we never learned. Their sacrifice is why we’re standing here now.”

She paused, swallowed, grimaced.

“Um… does anybody have a glass of water?” she croaked.

Ebyn stepped forward and gently placed a hand on her shoulder.

“If I may,” he said softly, easing her aside.

He straightened, and when he spoke, his voice carried a weight that stilled the air.

“I have seen a thousand futures,” he said. “Most of them end badly. Some end in silence. Some with screaming. A few… with something worse.”

He looked at each of them in turn.

“But none of those futures – none – accounted for you three. They didn’t calculate Brabara’s stubborn heart. They didn’t consider Xalen’s cunning. They couldn’t predict Seknafret’s refusal to die.”

A faint smile touched his lips.

“And that is why Vecna loses. He sees people as tools. Puppets. Playthings. But I’ve stood beside you. I’ve watched you risk everything for each other. Not for glory. Not for power. But because it’s right.”

His voice softened.

“And I… I’ve changed. I’m not just a student of fate anymore. I don’t hide behind probabilities or destiny. I stand with my friends. And I would rather die here, defying everything that monster stands for, than live one more day knowing I let him win.”

He drew a breath.

“So, if this is the end… then let’s make it the kind of end even a god of secrets can’t silence. Let’s show him what we’re made of.”

Brabara looked away, eyes wet, and saw Tiny standing beside Malaina and the two shadar‑kai. She strode to him, lifted a chain from around her neck, and pressed it into his hands.

“Take this,” she said, locking eyes with him. “Keep it with you. But promise me you won’t open it until I get back.”

Tiny looked down at the silver locket. “What is it?”

“Promise me,” Brabara insisted, closing his hands around it.

“I promise,” he said, pulling her into a warm embrace. “I should be coming with you.”

“No, my love,” Brabara murmured into his neck. “I can’t do this if you’re there. I need to know you’re safe.”

Nearby, Alustriel said her goodbyes to Malaina while Ebyn spoke quietly with Vaeve and Naxa.

Xalen and Seknafret stood alone by the portal.

“This is it, I guess,” Seknafret said. “Assuming we’re successful, I look forward to focusing on the slightly less dangerous threats back on Toril.”

“Sounds like you and Alustriel have that under control,” Xalen said.

Seknafret nodded. “We do, I think. But it would be nice not to have a threat looming over me for a change.”

Xalen chuckled. “You could always join me and my sister on Oerth.”

Seknafret smiled. “I could never abandon my order. But… thank you.”

---

Brabara stepped through the portal first and emerged atop a floating volcano suspended in a swirl of unrestrained chaos.

Rain fell from the clouds, turning to dirt mid‑air, blooming into colourful flowers that ignited, burned to ash, and rose again as cloud.

A persistent wind circled the mountaintop, holding the madness at bay – a tiny island of stability in a sea of shifting reality.

The others followed, each pausing to take in the unhinged wonder of Limbo.

“It’s even weirder than I imagined,” Seknafret said, staring out into the swirling madness.

“Best not to look too closely,” Alustriel warned. “Lest we succumb to its will.”

As if to prove her point, Xalen, Quintus, and Ebyn all grimaced at once.

Acid welled across Xalen’s skin, sizzling.

Quintus doubled over, retching a stream of dark bile.

Flames erupted along Ebyn’s arms; he slapped them out with one hand even as the other caught fire.

“Where do we go?” Seknafret asked.

“Down there,” Brabara said, pointing into the volcano’s cone. “That’s where the Rod is guiding me.”

Peering down, they saw a mass of purple crystal jutting from a floor of cooled lava fifty feet below.

Brabara raised the Rod and activated its magic. An arcane gate shimmered into existence beside the glowing crystals. Xalen stepped through first, scouted the area, and signalled that it was safe. The others followed.

Alustriel stepped toward the gate and stopped short as if she’d walked into a wall. Quintus tried next with the same result.

“We can’t go through,” Alustriel said over the telepathic link.

“Try teleporting down?” Ebyn suggested.

Alustriel nodded and reached for the Weave, but the spell fizzled, leaving her and Quintus stranded atop the volcano.

“No luck,” she said. “There’s a forbiddance here keeping us out.”

“But not us,” Seknafret said. “Maybe our link to Vecna lets us pass.”

“Perhaps,” Alustriel said. “Or the power of the wish that brought you to us marked you in some way.”

“What will you do?” Ebyn asked.

Alustriel hesitated only a moment. “We cannot remain here. The plane will consume us. We must return to Sigil.”

“Thank you, Alustriel,” Seknafret said. “For supporting us, and for helping restore the veil.”

Alustriel nodded. “Goodbye, my friends. May the fates preserve you.”

She and Quintus gave a final wave, then stepped back through the portal to Sigil, and vanished.

“Looks like we’re on our own,” Brabara said, hefting her hammer. “The Rod says we go deeper.”

“There are three tunnels here,” Xalen noted. “All heading down. Do you get a sense of which one?”

Brabara shook her head. “No. We just pick one.”

She crossed the chamber inside the volcano’s cone and stepped into the nearest tunnel. The natural cave wound downward for several hundred paces, twisting and turning until any sense of direction was lost.

Carvings lined the walls. Reliefs of gods from countless worlds, each shown dead or dying by Vecna’s hand. Tiamat. Lolth. The Raven Queen. All depicted in torment.

“These carvings…” Ebyn murmured, tracing the image of the Raven Queen bound to a cross, pelted by stones from faceless masses. “He put them here to frighten us. To flaunt his power. But they reveal something else too.”

He lifted the black staff Naxa and Vaeve had risked so much to deliver.

“They reveal his fear. We have been blessed by these very gods. This staff is from the Raven Queen. Seknafret, your shield, and Xalen’s necklace, gifts from Tiamat.”

“That’s a stretch,” Brabara muttered. “She didn’t exactly hand them to us.”

Ebyn shot her a withering look. “It doesn’t matter. Vecna wants us to believe he stands above all things. That his victory is inevitable. But it isn’t. He is the one isolated. He is the one alone.”

He spread his arms to include the others.

“We have each other. And in every pantheon, in every realm, the gods he seeks to topple are watching.”

He closed his eyes for a moment. “Calm your thoughts. Listen. You’ll hear them.”

Xalen leaned toward Brabara. “He’s finally lost it,” he whispered.

Ebyn continued, undeterred. “These images shouldn’t frighten us. They should embolden us. They are not symbols of power. They are symbols of fear.”

A long, awkward silence followed. No one was quite sure whether he was finished.

At last, Ebyn opened his eyes. “Well?” He gestured down the passage. “Onward.”

They continued their descent. A thin mist began to gather, faint at first, then thickening with every step until they could barely see the person ahead of them.

“I think I see stars,” Xalen murmured, his voice muffled by the fog.

“Stars? Are you sure?” Brabara whispered.

“Absolutely.” He took one more step and vanished.

Brabara froze. “Xalen! Where are you?”

“What happened?” Ebyn asked. “I can’t sense him over the bond.”

“He’s gone,” Brabara said, sweeping her polearm through the mist. “He said he saw stars and then… nothing.”

“We should move forward,” Seknafret said. “He could be in trouble.”

Brabara gripped her weapon in both hands and stepped ahead, Ebyn and Seknafret close behind.

The fog thinned, then broke.

Stars shone all around them.

They drifted into a vast expanse of silvery lights, weightless and unmoored. Brabara’s stomach lurched; she remembered this sensation from the Astral Plane and hated it just as much now as she had then.

Xalen floated a few feet ahead, staring at the drifting remains of enormous stone corpses. Nearby, a monstrous behemoth – part lobster, part serpent, crowned with horns – groaned as it drifted through a cloud of debris. Its single eye darted wildly in pain and confusion while six spherical pests, each with a single eye and gaping maw, gnawed at its flanks.

From deep within the creature’s belly, Vecna’s unholy symbol glowed like a malignant star.

“What is that thing?” Xalen breathed.

“An astral dreadnought,” Ebyn said. “They roam the deep Astral Sea, devouring anything they find. I read that they have a demi‑plane inside them, anything they swallow gets sent there before digestion.”

The Rod thrummed in Brabara’s hand.

“It’s telling me that’s where we have to go,” she said.

“In there?” Xalen sputtered. “Have you seen the teeth on that thing?”

“And the six other monsters around it,” Seknafret added.

The dreadnought let out a cry – deep, mournful, and so full of pain it vibrated through their bones.

“Maybe we should help it,” Brabara said, glancing at Ebyn. “If we save it from those pests, maybe it’ll let us in without… you know… swallowing us.”

Ebyn shrugged. “Perhaps. I have no idea.”

They spread out, drifting forward in four directions to avoid clustering for fireballs or worse.

Xalen peppered the nearest eye‑beast with arrows. Seknafret and Ebyn hurled spells, knocking another back with each blast.

The dreadnought noticed them. Its massive eye rolled toward them, fearful, pleading.

Brabara floated closer, hammer ready. The dreadnought’s eye fixed on her, and she felt a pull. Part her own intent, part the creature’s will. She drifted helplessly toward its gaping maw and vanished inside.

Ebyn’s firebolts struck another eye‑monster, flames rippling across its spherical body. It shrieked and went still.

Xalen felled a second. Seknafret blasted a third apart. Three remained.

The dreadnought turned again, its wounds leaking dark blood into the void. Its eye locked onto Seknafret and she, too, was drawn helplessly into its mouth.

Brabara landed on a mound of loose rocks inside a cavern the size of a mountain. A deep valley separated her from a second, larger mound. A colossal iron sword, pitted and rusted, bridged the gap like a makeshift walkway.

A structure rose from the scree, a statue at its centre glowing with the same purple light as the crystals at the volcano’s base.

“I guess that’s it,” Brabara muttered, picking her way down the unstable slope.

The stones shifted underfoot. She barely leapt aside as a massive wormlike creature with dozens of eyes, and a forest of tentacles, erupted from beneath the scree.

Brabara swung, smashing one tentacle aside, but another wrapped around her torso, squeezing tight.

Whispers flooded her mind. Faint, poisonous words that clawed at her fears and doubts. Tears welled unbidden.

Outside, in the Astral void, Ebyn and Xalen continued their assault. The remaining pests were vicious but slow, easy targets for Xalen’s arrows and Ebyn’s spells. One by one, they fell.

Inside the dreadnought, Brabara tore the tentacle free and smashed the creature’s head, pushing off to create distance. But the beast was fast – it whipped around, blocking her path to the glowing statue.

Seknafret appeared on the mound where Brabara had first arrived. She spotted the fight and unleashed a volley of eldritch blasts, knocking the tentacled monster back.

“Thanks!” Brabara called, scrambling through the scree toward the statue.

She drew the Rod and pressed it to the glowing symbol of Vecna.

The symbol flared, brilliant, violent, and vanished.

The cavern shuddered.

And the world dissolved around them.

---

They reappeared at the base of the volcano. The tunnel they’d taken to reach the astral realm had collapsed into rubble.

“That was weird,” Xalen said, patting himself down for injuries.

“Indeed,” Ebyn replied. “I suspect the remaining tunnels lead to similar fabrications of Vecna’s twisted mind.”

Brabara still held the Rod tightly. “It’s telling me we need to go down. So, I guess we clear the other two tunnels before we can get any deeper.”

Seknafret frowned at the purple crystal. “I don’t remember those cracks. Clearing each tunnel must weaken the structure enough for us to pass.”

“Right then,” Brabara said. “Let’s get to it.”

They entered the next tunnel, following its winding descent into the bedrock. Carvings lined the walls, Vecna enthroned across countless worlds, his skeletal hand guiding kings and queens like puppets.

Mist gathered again, thickening with every step.

“Do you hear that?” Xalen whispered as the fog reached its densest point.

“Yes,” Brabara murmured beside him. “Sounds like… a crowd.”

“Keep going,” Xalen said. “Hand on the person in front.”

They pressed forward. The faint noise grew into the unmistakable murmur of hundreds of voices. The mist thinned. Buildings materialised around them.

They stepped out through a gate into the Neverwinter town square.

They stood at the back of a massive crowd. Hundreds of citizens stared up at a regal figure on a balcony, a man clad in spiked armour, his face hidden beneath a crown bearing Vecna’s glowing symbol.

Four gallows stood in the centre of the square. A dozen undead guards waited behind them, desiccated faces blank and cold.

The crowd trembled as the king spoke in a voice that was horribly familiar.

“Our Lord Vecna has decreed that the traitorous criminals be found and brought before me to face justice. Brabara, Xalen, Seknafret, and Ebyn are to be captured. Any citizen aiding these traitors will be killed, and their families sent to the mines.”

“That’s it,” Brabara said. “I need to get up there and use the Rod on the helmet.”

“I can give you flying,” Seknafret offered.

Brabara blanched. “Um, no thanks. I’ve got an easier way.” She looked at Ebyn. “Tell me you prepared enlarge today.”

Ebyn nodded. “I did.”

Brabara grinned. “Perfect. You three handle the guards, I’ll deal with the king.”

“What about the people?” Seknafret asked.

Ebyn shrugged. “What about them? None of this is real.”

Xalen’s eyes lit up. “In that case, I know exactly how to handle the guards.”

Brabara channelled her magic, growing to giant size. Ebyn blew powdered iron over her, speaking the words and she doubled again, towering high enough to reach the balcony from the ground.

Nearby citizens screamed and scattered in terror.

Xalen snapped all five beads from his necklace and hurled them over the crowd. They detonated in a massive fireball that engulfed the guards, the gallows, the balcony and a large portion of the panicked crowd.

Dozens of citizens died instantly. Most of the guards were incinerated. Even the armoured king staggered under the blast.

He shouted orders at the few remaining guards as Brabara stepped over burning bodies, using the gallows as a footstool to climb onto the balcony.

He drew his sword and slashed at her enormous form, the blade biting deep. Brabara swung her hammer in return, folding him with the impact, but he remained standing, undead resilience keeping him upright.

Seknafret traced a line through the air. Radiant light blossomed across the square, burning the remaining undead where they stood. Only one survived the initial onslaught and Ebyn’s firebolt dropped it as it charged.

On the balcony, Brabara and the king traded brutal blows. But even empowered by Vecna’s illusion, he was no match for her sheer might. Her final strike nearly knocked him over the edge; she caught him by the collar, tore the crown from his head, and let the body fall.

She pressed the Rod to the glowing symbol.

It flared - bright, violent – and vanished.

The world dissolved around them.

---

They reappeared once more at the base of the volcano. The second tunnel had collapsed behind them, and new cracks spider‑webbed across the purple crystal.

“That was fun,” Brabara said, still grinning despite shrinking back to her normal size.

“I’ll say,” Xalen replied. “Did you see the size of that fireball?”

Ebyn frowned. “I thought you used all the beads in that throw.”

“I did.” Xalen reached up to touch the necklace, then froze. The beads had reappeared. “Hot damn. This thing is amazing. And you tried to talk me out of getting it.”

“I still don’t trust it,” Ebyn muttered. “Everything you get from hell comes with a price. I just hope we defeat Vecna before anyone has to pay it.”

Xalen shrugged. “Guess we’ll find out.”

They followed the third tunnel as it twisted through the black stone. This time the walls were carved with images of Kas – dying, suffering, kneeling before Vecna. A visual litany of betrayal.

As before, the tunnel ended in thick fog. They stepped through and emerged from a cave overlooking a ruined castle.

“This place looks familiar,” Ebyn said, staring up at the shattered keep.

“Me too,” Brabara said. “But I don’t remember it being this wrecked.”

Ebyn snapped his fingers. “Kas’s castle. Keoland. His homeland on Oerth. We saw it in one of our nightmares before he and Vecna became enemies.”

They approached from the south. The once‑mighty gates had been blown apart, the gatehouse reduced to rubble. Two massive figures moved in the courtyard, ancient war machines, their frames bristling with impaled bodies.

The constructs hadn’t noticed them yet. But when Brabara and Xalen stepped into the breach, both heads snapped toward them.

The two warriors stood side by side, hammer and rapier ready. Seknafret and Ebyn held position behind.

The nearest war machine lumbered forward. Brabara met it head‑on, smashing its metal plating with her hammer. The creature reeled, then leaned forward and exhaled a cloud of noxious gas that engulfed all four of them.

Brabara, Ebyn, and Xalen shook off the effects, but Seknafret froze, muscles locking tight.

The second construct joined the first. It tore one of the impaled corpses from its back and hurled it over Brabara’s head. The rotting body burst apart on the rubble, releasing three shrieking spirits.

Brabara and Xalen held the line against the constructs while Ebyn turned to face the undead. Two spirits lunged at him; the third raked its claws across Seknafret’s paralysed form.

The pain snapped her free. She twisted aside just in time to avoid the spectre’s next strike.

Brabara and Xalen fought shoulder to shoulder. Brabara’s hammer rang against metal, denting plates but struggling to reach the delicate mechanisms beneath. Xalen’s strikes were fewer but precise, darting in whenever Brabara knocked a construct off balance. His rapier slipped through gaps in the armour, piercing deep.

A viscous green fluid leaked from the creature’s frame. Its movements grew jerky.

The sword exulted in Xalen’s mind, urging him, guiding him, whispering when to wait and when to strike.

Brabara delivered a brutal uppercut, snapping the construct’s head back.

“Now!” the sword shrieked.

Xalen lunged. His blade drove into a gap at the creature’s waist, slicing through pipes and gears. Something inside snapped with a metallic ping. The war machine convulsed, shuddered, and collapsed in a heap of rusted metal and gore.

“Holy shit,” Brabara breathed. “That was amazing.”

By the time the first construct fell, Ebyn and Seknafret had dispatched the three undead. Together, the four of them overwhelmed the remaining war machine, which toppled under their combined assault.

“Anyone injured?” Seknafret asked once the courtyard fell silent.

“Just a few cuts and bruises,” Brabara said. “I’m fine.”

Seknafret nodded and healed herself with a brief pulse of magic before they moved deeper into the ruined keep.

A wide avenue lined with statues greeted them on the far side of the courtyard. Six stone effigies of Vecna, each in a different regal pose, flanked the path, forming a grim procession leading deeper into the keep.

“I don’t like the look of those,” Brabara muttered. “We should find another way into that building.”

“You’re sure that’s where we need to go?” Ebyn asked, eyeing the statues warily.

“That’s what the Rod is telling me,” Brabara said, pointing toward the only section of the ruined keep that still had a roof. “Somewhere in there.”

“Looks like there’s a walkway along the battlements,” Xalen said. “If we can get up to it.”

“Hold on,” Ebyn said, pulling a small owl from his bag of holding. “Let me send Hoot around to check.”

“I didn’t know you still had that,” Brabara said.

“I keep him tucked away these days,” Ebyn replied as he tossed the fey creature into the air. “It hasn’t been safe for him where we’ve been.”

Hoot spread his wings and soared upward. Ebyn’s eyes glazed as he watched through the familiar’s senses. The keep was small enough that Hoot completed his circuit in minutes.

“Xalen was right,” Ebyn said as he recalled the owl. “We can circle the battlements. There’s a collapsed wall we can climb up, and another on the far side that leads inside.”

They found the rubble easily and climbed to the battlements, then made their way around the perimeter to the crumbled wall. The broken stones gave them access to what had once been the keep’s audience chamber.

A stone chair sat atop a raised dais at the rear of the room. An armoured figure occupied it, unmoving, save for the faint glow of red eyes that tracked Xalen as he scrambled down the rubble.

“There’s someone down here,” Xalen said over the telepathic bond.

“Kas?” Brabara asked.

“No. A knight of some kind. Undead, I think.”

“Undead?” Seknafret said. “What’s it doing?”

“Nothing. Just staring at me. Are you coming down or what?”

Brabara half climbed, half slid down the uneven stones and came to stand beside Xalen. “Whatever we’re here for is through there,” she said, pointing to an archway to the right of the seated knight.

“After you,” Xalen said with a gesture.

Brabara kept her eyes on the undead knight as she moved. It didn’t rise or reach for a weapon, it simply turned its head to follow their progress as they crossed the chamber and stepped through the archway.

Inside, the unmistakable form of Kas sat hunched in the far corner of the square room. Each limb was shackled to a ten‑foot chain, all four chains bolted to a massive black iron sphere. He didn’t look up as they entered. His eyes remained fixed on a tattered tapestry hanging from the wall.

The hilt of a sword jutted over his shoulder, its pommel glowing with Vecna’s symbol.

A low growl rumbled out of Brabara.

“I thought we banished you, you fucker,” she hissed.

Kas looked at her then, face slack and strangely empty.

“Who are you?” he asked, voice soft and sad.

“You know who we are, cunt,” Brabara snapped, knuckles whitening around her hammer.

Kas stared at her for a long moment. “I do not.” He turned back to the tattered tapestry on the wall. “Why are you here?”

“I need your sword,” Brabara said, her voice losing some of its venom. “We need it to get out of this place and defeat Vecna.”

“Thieves, then?” Kas murmured.

Ebyn stepped into the room. “Not thieves. We were hoping you might give it to us.”

Kas looked at him, eyes hollow. “Why would I do that? It is all I have left to remind me of who I am. It is all that remains of my purpose.”

Ebyn nodded. “Your purpose, yes. To kill Vecna. To rid the world of his taint. To restore your honour.”

Kas’s gaze sharpened. “That is correct.”

“That is our purpose as well,” Ebyn said. “With your sword, we can do what you could not.”

Kas’s lips peeled back. He rose, chains rattling. “You insult me, mage. You think you will succeed where I cannot?”

Ebyn lifted his hands. “I misspoke. I don’t mean you’re incapable. Only that chained as you are, you’re prevented from acting. We are free. We can move where you cannot.”

Kas leaned back against the wall. “You seek to defeat Vecna?”

“We do,” Ebyn said.

Kas scoffed. “He has faced far worse than you. What do you even know of him?”

Ebyn hesitated, then smiled faintly. “Quite a lot, actually. Perhaps more than most.”

And he began to speak.

He told Kas everything. Their shared nightmares, Vecna’s rise, the destruction of Fleeth, the betrayal, the transformation, the immortality, the fight that shattered their bond. Kas’s expression shifted with each memory: sadness, pride, anger, rage… and then a strange calm as Ebyn recounted events Kas could never have witnessed.

Kas laughed when Vecna was taken by the Dark Powers. He snarled at the escape. He grew silent as the threads of Vecna’s plan emerged.

“I don’t like where this is heading,” Brabara whispered through the bond.

Ebyn paused. Kas’s expression had gone flat, unreadable.

“Why have you stopped?” Kas asked. “Continue.”

Ebyn swallowed, took a sip of water, and finished the tale. The ritual, the stakes, the end of all things.

“This ritual,” Kas said quietly. “It is happening now. And you need my sword to stop it?”

“That’s right,” Ebyn said.

“No.”

Ebyn blinked. “No?”

“I will not let you have it.” Kas lifted his shackled arms, chains clinking. “Free me. Take me with you. Let me be the one to kill the mad lich.”

“We can’t do that,” Ebyn said. “We can’t take you with us.”

Kas’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

Ebyn exhaled slowly. “Because you’re not real. None of this is real. You’re a fantasy Vecna created to feed his ego.”

Kas froze.

“I’m not real?” he repeated, each word louder. His fists clenched. He drew the sword from his back.

“I’ll show you how real I am!” he roared and lunged.

Brabara had been watching him closely. She stepped in front of Ebyn and swung, smashing Kas aside with a brutal hammer blow.

Ebyn stumbled backward out of the room, straight into the armoured knight, now risen and charging.

He squeaked, vanished in a puff of mist, and reappeared beside Seknafret on the battlements.

Xalen, hearing the squeal, sprinted to the archway. He saw the knight advancing.

“Get the sword!” he shouted to Brabara. “I’ll handle this one!”

The knight turned toward him.

Kas recovered quickly despite the chains. He brought his sword up, eyes burning.

“I didn’t get to kill you properly last time,” Brabara snarled. “I’m going to enjoy this.”

Kas attacked. His blade blurred. Brabara blocked two strikes, but the third cut deep into her shoulder. She hit back hard, hammer ringing against steel. She tried to hook his leg, but he slipped inside her guard and slashed her other arm.

Brabara staggered. Kas surged forward, but the chains snapped taut, stopping him short. He strained, screaming in frustration.

Brabara watched him.

She saw the fatigue. The pain. The way his wounds didn’t heal. The way he trembled under the weight of his chains.

This wasn’t Kas.

Not the one who betrayed her. Not the monster who murdered her unborn child. This was a shadow. A broken echo trapped in Vecna’s mindscape.

A victim.

And for the first time, Brabara pitied him.

“What are you doing?” Xalen shouted from the archway, locked in combat with the knight. “Kill him! Get the sword!”

Brabara turned back to Kas.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Kas stopped straining, though he kept his sword raised. “Sorry? For what?”

“I know you didn’t ask for this,” she said softly. “But I really need that sword.”

Kas shifted his stance, gripping the blade in both hands. “Then come and take it.”

Brabara charged. Kas dodged the first swing, and they traded blows. She stepped beside the massive iron ball anchoring his chains.

Kas raised his sword high for a diagonal strike.

That was the moment she’d been waiting for.

Brabara grabbed the chains and yanked with all her strength.

Kas lurched forward, completely off balance, and slammed face‑first into the iron sphere.

Before he could recover, Brabara seized the chains on his legs and heaved. Kas flipped onto his back, one leg in the air, the other twisted beneath him. She tugged again, keeping him off balance, then let go.

Kas struggled, tangled in steel.

Brabara raised her hammer and brought it down.

Once. Twice. A third time.

Each blow dented his armour, crushed bone, drove the breath from his lungs. By the end, Kas could only wheeze through blood‑filled coughs.

Brabara knelt, lifted the sword from his grasp.

His eyes met hers. “Make sure you kill him,” he rasped.

Brabara stepped aside and touched the glowing symbol with the Rod.

Reality dissolved.

---

They reappeared at the base of the volcano.

The third tunnel had collapsed.

A sharp series of cracks echoed from within the crystalline mass. The group instinctively backed away as the entire cavern began to tremble. Deep fractures split the purple crystal, light bleeding through the widening rents before a final, thunderous crack shook the chamber.

The crystals exploded.

Shards whistled through the air, forcing everyone to shield their faces. When the dust finally settled, a deep pit yawned where the crystal structure had once stood. Screaming winds spiralled within it, whipping the last of the purple dust into a furious vortex. Wisps of neon‑green light rose from the depths like tortured spirits trying to escape.

Xalen peered over the edge, grimacing. “I guess we have to go down there, right?”

Brabara nodded, tightening her grip on the Rod. “I’m afraid so.”