"How can you be certain of our deaths?" Nessalir asked. "I have faced many great foes and lived to tell of it."

  But Iarius shook his head. "You have faced no foes such as this." He ran his fingers over the ancient writings, his eyes studying the strange letters as though confirming what he'd read. "The Karkhosians wielded many magics now lost to us. In the ruins of their empire, they left behind a great many enchantments. With the passing of countless years, and the ebb and flow of magic with the passage of so many seasons, many of these enchantments have weakened."

  "Such an enchantment lies beyond these doors, I take it?" asked Nessalir. "The creature we face was so bound, but now is freed thanks to the weakening magic. All the more reason to slay it before it can do more harm. What manner of beast is it, that you are so frightened?"

  Iarius let out a sigh. "Within this chamber has been bound the scion of Arjent Qur."

  Nessalir frowned. She cast about her mind for why that name sounded so familiar, and when she found her answer, her eyes widened in shock. "The star?"

  "Yes," said Iarius. "The Left Eye of the Snake, twin brother of Arjent Sril, who together with his sibling rules over the Serpent Pantheon." His voice became urgent. "Nessalir, the master of this ruin is none other than a starspawn; the child of a god!"

  She found herself staring at the iron doors, imagining what sort of monstrosity could be waiting beyond them. Her human blood curdled in fear, yet her dragon blood was roused by the knowledge that a starspawn was but a scant few paces away. Slowly, she felt her terror fall away, and a savage smile spread across her lips.

  "Iarius," she said, drawing her sword. "On my mark, open these doors."

  The scholar gaped at her. "You cannot be serious!" he said. "Nessalir, was I not clear? It's a starspawn. They reshape the very world around them, bring destruction wherever they go! When one appears, it is calamity itself, until such time as it ascends to the firmament to take its place in godhood."

  "Not always," said Nessalir, her eyes never leaving the metal barrier that separated her from her prey. "Starspawn have been slain before. Or do they not have such songs in Remura?"

  Iarius scoffed. "Songs! They are embellishments! You truly believe a mortal human can slay a god's progeny?"

  "I do," replied the mercenary. "But even if a human cannot, I am not fully human, am I? And dragons have slain gods before."

  Her companion sputtered, protested, yet had no reply. Nessalir's heart was set, and she was committed now to her course, devoted to this battle yet to come. It would be a battle to be commemorated in song and saga. Her chest burned as embers within her sparked into flame, and her mouth salivated with the prospect of what she was about to do.

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  Glory! Glory would be hers, claimed with her human mettle and her dragon's heart!

  "You're mad," said Iarius.

  Nessalir glanced at him. She could not keep the smile off her face. "Open the doors," she told him. "Now."

  Whatever he saw on her face, Nessalir could not say. But it was enough for further protestations to die on his lips. Iarius swallowed, grasped the rounded handles, and, throwing open the way forward, leapt to the side.

  Letting out a war cry of ecstasy and bloodlust, Nessalir charged forth. She crossed the threshold into a great rounded chamber, the walls carved with runes that glowed with azure lights. In the center of the chamber, she beheld a great crystal sphere, silver in color, which hung suspended above the ground. The air around the sphere shimmered, and tendrils of pallid flesh orbited its mass, grasping hands sprouting from every inch of the massive appendages.

  They were myriad, and they twisted all about one another, such that Nessalir could not count their number even if she tried. Yet even when confronted with the nightmarish impossibility of the starspawn, Nessalir did not slow and did not waver.

  A mass of flesh flung itself at her, hands extending their fingers to grasp her body, and Nessalir exhaled the heat which had been building in her chest. Flames passed from her lips and danced over the starspawn's limb, blackening fingers and charring the pale organ to a burnt dark. The howls which emanated from the center of the silver sphere changed in tone, taking on new notes of pain and fury, and more tendrils of flesh lashed out at the drakkowar.

  It was an attack that Nessalir expected. She ducked beneath one pillar of flesh, slashed another with her sword, and hacked through the burnt remains of the first. Red, foul-smelling blood fell the stone floor all around her, and the charred remains of that first tendril crumbled beneath the might of her assault.

  Nessalir danced among the writhing masses of flesh that the starspawn sent after her. No matter how far the hands which covered these pallid tentacles extended themselves, none could grasp her muscular form. Her sword flashed and blurred, and the tiles beneath her feet were slick with blood. Behind her, her red tail danced, shifting her weight back and forth as needed so that the half-dragon warrior maintained balance even in the throes of hectic combat.

  She laughed. Her dragonblood sang within her. This was what she had been made for.

  But suddenly a new sound cut across her laughter and the starspawn's howls. It was a shriek of pure, unfettered terror, such that it cooled her blood as rapidly and as surely as though she had fallen through a sheet of ice into frigid water below. Nessalir spun and saw its source, though even before her golden eyes found it, she knew from where the scream had come.

  While she'd fought the many tendrils of the starspawn, another mass of that awful pale flesh had snuck past her, extended itself through the doors, and the many hands which covered it had taken hold of Iarius. Now he struggled vainly and cried out in desperate fear as he was dragged toward the central, silver sphere of the starspawn's body.

  The shimmering around the sphere grew violent, and shapes could almost be seen within the mirage which covered its surface. Nessalir knew with a dread certainty that if Iarius was brought to that sphere, then he too would suffer Froki's fate and be made into a draugr in the starspawn's service.

  As two more tendrils moved to intercept her, Nessalir charged once more--to save her companion.