"RECLAIM WHAT SHE STOLE!" Jannis's roar reverberated within the hollows of Greywind's skull, a jagged command driving him toward a singular, brutal act.
Foregoing the distance of his sorcery, Greywind invoked Misty Step. He vanished in a whorl of silver mist and coalesced directly behind Althea, well within the lethal reach of his steel. With a fluid, desperate lunge, he drove his rapier through her back. The blade transfixed her, the needle-sharp point erupting from her chest in a spray of crimson and fine, glittering silt. She gasped, her sandy eyes bulging as the breath caught in her throat. She was broken, bleeding, but stubbornly, the spark of life refused to wink out.
"YES! WOUND HER! REND THE FLESH!" Jannis shrieked, her earlier fury transmuted into a feast of sadistic glee.
Despite the mortal iron in her chest, Althea did not fall. With a scream that was more snarl than plea, she unleashed a violent pulse of kinetic sand from her core. The detonation of grit and arcane force shook the very foundations of the vault. Greywind was hurled backward, his body slamming into the stone wall with a sickening thud. The world blurred into a haze of grey.
His ears rang with a high, mournful whistle, and white flashes danced across his vision. Althea stood swaying, clutching the ruin of her chest, as the sands at her feet writhed and rose to form two Greater Sand Sentinels monstrous, towering constructs of shifting quartz and malice.
"SHE STILL BREATHES! AND YOU ARE AT DEATH'S DOOR! NO! I WILL NOT LET YOU DIE BEFORE SHE DOES!" Jannis's voice was a frantic cacophony of panic and rage. "KILL HER! NOW!"
Greywind lay broken on the floor, the copper taste of blood filling his mouth. Survival, raw and unadorned, took the reins. With trembling fingers, he uncorked his Potion of Healing and drained it. The alchemical fire raced through his veins, knitting the most critical tears in his flesh and granting him a fleeting, borrowed strength. He scrambled behind a shattered wooden cage for cover.
Althea sneered, her voice a dry rattle. "You only delay the inevitable!" She thrust her hands forward; the sand on the floor formed a gargantuan claw that crushed his cover into splinters. Greywind rolled clear just as the timber disintegrated, finding himself exposed once more but untethered.
He surged to his feet, pivoting away from the advancing sentinels, and leveled his hand at Althea. He unleashed an Eldritch Blast. The bolt of pure void hammered into her chest, driving her back. She shrieked a sound of splintering glass and agony but remained standing, her eyes burning with an unholy light. "Sand... finish him!"
The Greater Sentinels lunged. The first swung a fist of compressed stone, but the wreckage of the cages provided a partial shield, and Greywind danced aside. The second unleashed a blast of abrasive grit, but he ducked beneath the searing arc.
"LOOK! THEY WITHER WITHOUT A TRUE MASTER! NOW, STRIKE BACK!" Jannis screamed, the desolation in her voice replaced by a desperate urge.
Greywind resolved to end the dance. He leapt from cover, ignoring the sentinels entirely. A jagged claw raked across his back as he ran, but he did not falter. He reached a clear line of sight to the swaying Mistress. With every ounce of hatred, every throb of pain, and the crushing weight of Jannis's will, he raised his hand.
The final Eldritch Blast took her squarely in the heart. The impact threw her backward, blood and silt erupting from her mouth. She collapsed to her knees, her body racked by violent tremors. She was not yet dead, but she lay shattered breath shallow, eyes vacant, a mere husk clinging to a single, fraying thread of life.
The moment she fell, the arcane tether snapped. The Greater Sentinels dissolved, their towering forms collapsing into piles of common, inert dust.
"AAAAAHHHH !!!!"
Jannis's climax was a psychic supernova. It was no longer mere pleasure, but a religious release of rage, victory, and profound gratification. It swept through Greywind like a tidal wave scalding, thundering, a chorus of uncontrollable laughter and moans.
"FINALLY! FINALLY! YOU RETURN HER TO ME! HER LIFE... HER SOUL IS MINE NOW! GIVE IT TO ME! END HER! AND... TAKE HER HEAD!" Jannis's voice echoed in a thousand-fold harmony, a command that brook no defiance.
Althea lay helpless, her golden eyes fading. "I... hoped... to see my sister again..." she rasped, a ghost of a whisper filled with a sudden, tragic longing. "She... she knew nothing... of what I did..." She fell silent, waiting for the cold.
Greywind exhaled, a grim shadow crossing his face. "In truth, I have no desire to spurn a woman's final wish. But... there is one woman I dare not provoke." He glanced to his side, as if seeing Jannis's heaving, expectant form.
He withdrew his rapier. With a slow, ritualistic grace, he pressed the point to Althea's throat and drove it home. The steel slid through skin and bone. Althea's eyes flared for a final heartbeat, then the light vanished forever.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKH !!!"
Jannis's peak was a singular, blinding apex a psychic explosion that fused every death of the night into a banquet of satisfaction. Greywind felt the sensation of a long, wet kiss across his entire body, followed by a sharp, ecstatic bite at the nape of his neck. The scent of iron, hot sand, and rotting honey overwhelmed his senses. Jannis sighed, moaned, and finally dissolved into a deep, sated hum.
"Seductive... perfect... Greywind... you have given me a royal feast..." she whispered, her voice a sated rasp. "I am... full. I shall sleep for a time. But I will dream of you... and our next hunt..."
The psychic weight of her presence receded, settling into a warm, heavy silence in the corner of his mind. She would be still for days.
Greywind stood alone in the chamber of death. He stripped the shimmering robes of Althea, finding a silver locket sand trapped in a drop of water and a small tome of ritual notes. He claimed her gold, her desert gems, and her fine wooden staff. Finally, he found a tattered letter. "...Take care of yourself, Althea. I will return from the North. Do not let them use you. Lyra."
"Her sister, Lyra," he mused, pocketing the lead.
Using his crowbar and the remaining dregs of his strength, Greywind dismantled the altar and the supports. He cast the Sandheart Gem into a dark, yawning silt-well behind the final door, watching it vanish into the void. Without the focus, the cave's malevolent energy began to fray and dissolve. Elara, waiting at the threshold, would feel the psychic pressure of her "dream-seed" go dormant, a dark memory finally put to rest.
Thirty minutes later, the cave was but a tomb of stone and common sand. Greywind emerged into the blinding gold of a desert sunset. Elara and the three captives waited by the rocks. She approached him, her face a mask of relief and lingering dread.
"Is it done?"
"The place is ash. The cult is no more."
Elara nodded. "I feel... lighter. The whispers have ceased." She looked at him with a complex gaze gratitude, fear, and a strange pity. "What now?"
"We seek the oasis," Greywind said, looking toward the horizon. "Zephyr's Rest lies to the west. Let us move before the dark returns."
The trek took two hours. Zephyr's Rest was a jewel of the wastes, bustling with trade and the steam of natural hot springs. Greywind took a room at The Sunken Cup, paying extra for a private bath. He sank into the hot, clear water, letting the heat soak into his wounds and wash away the grime of the slaughter.
As he leaned back, eyes closed, a soft knock came at the door. Before he could answer, Elara entered. She had bathed, her blonde hair damp, wrapped only in a simple linen cloth.
"I cannot repay you with words alone, Greywind," she said softly. "And I... I need to feel something real. Not a dream. Not terror. But warmth."
She let the cloth fall. Her frame was lithe, marked by the scars of the field and the crystalline scratches of her imprisonment. She stepped into the water and sat across from him. Initially, she simply leaned against his chest, her head on his shoulder, letting the tension of weeks bleed into the water.
Then, she turned, straddling him. She searched his eyes and kissed him a deep, lingering exchange of gratitude rather than fire. Her hands traced his new scars, mapping the price he had paid for her life. The intimacy was not a frantic pursuit of pleasure, but a slow, rhythmic sharing of presence. Her moans were a release of the soul.
At the peak, she bit her lip to stifle her cry, her body trembling against his before she collapsed into his chest, her breath coming in warm gasps. They sat in the cooling water for a long time.
"I return to Candlekeep," she whispered eventually. "I have much to report. But... if you ever have need of a scholar's hand or a hidden truth... I am in your debt. I do not forget."
She pressed a small wax seal with the Candlekeep crest into his palm. "Show this to any curator. They will find me." She paused at the door. "Live well, Greywind. Or... live as you must."
She vanished into the night, leaving Greywind alone with the cooling water and the hanging ghosts of the past.