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drew back and he heard a muffled cry of alarm from beneath the mask.
    Quinsareth freed his leg and planted a boot on the shadowed man’s torso, pushing hard while pulling on the looped chain. All resistance quickly went slack as the bladed chain tore through flesh and sinew. The shadows dispersed, exposing the damp, translucent skin of the man beneath. A crack in the white mask offered a glimpse of the disfigured face within.
    Quinsareth swiftly abandoned any thought of the horrors that could have inflicted such injury and looked up to the balcony. Vesk stood there waiting, drawing his arm back to throw knives as the darkness disappeared. The assassin’s wrist flicked like lightning, loosing three blades in the space of a heartbeat.
    Bedlam danced upward to block the first knife as Quinsareth rolled sideways, dodging the second. The third opened a ragged gash across his collarbone. He winced at the pain of the wound, but jumped forward, tumbling as he ran for the stone column at the base of the stairs. The last of Vesk’s knives sang against the floor as he moved.
    Putting his back to the column, Quinsareth caught his breath. He reached up to the bleeding wound on his collarbone with his right hand, which also bled from many small cuts inflicted by the bladed chain. Bedlam seemed to feel these pains and its handle twitched in Quinsareth’s left hand, a sibilant hum emanating along its length.
    Quinsareth looked to the front door. It was still covered by the tanglefoot mass, but he knew he didn’t have much time left. The exposed liquid could last only so long before it would grow brittle and flake away. He’d tracked the Fallen Few’s assassins for too long to allow these last two to escape.
    He turned and ran up the stairs, Bedlam raised defensively and prepared to strike. Blue-Eyes awaited him at the top, smiling ominously with purple gums and inhaling a deep breath, mist curling at the edges of his mouth.
    As the yellow mist belched from the maw of the assassin, Quinsareth charged through, heedless of the sulfurous smell and disorienting nature of the vapor. He threw his weight and momentum into a punch. The blow landed squarely on the pale man’s chest, knocking the breath from his lungs. Quin held his own breath, but his eyes still burned in the yellow mist. He followed the punch with another, slamming Blue-Eyes against the wall. Bedlam immediately followed the strike, thrusting into the heaving chest of the deformed man. Blood and mist flowed freely from the wound once Quinsareth withdrew the blade.
    When he turned around, Vesk was gone. Quinsareth cautiously sidestepped along the rail, peering into the shadows near the balcony.
    He caught a flash of bright eyes watching him in the darkness, tucked in a corner between a stone column and the wall. Then they disappeared on a sudden breeze, causing the torches nearby to flicker and wave. A strange sensation passed through him, a kindred chill that he both loathed and recognized at the same time. He shook the feeling off quickly as Vesk’s silhouette appeared on the balcony near the top of the ancient altar.
    Long ago, the stone building had been a temple to a dark deity, a fiendish lord demanding sacrifice and blood. In recent years, the remote location of the temple and the ruins that surrounded it had become a prime location for secret and unscrupulous meetings, catering to those with no wish to be found or heard. Much of the temple’s macabre elements had been stolen or carted off as building materials, but the large sacrificial bowl and the twisted statue that supported it remained. Stained by years of spilled blood and now filled with a deep red wine called erskilye, or the oathwater, it was a reminder of the nature of the Border Kingdoms, a symbol of false permanence and ruin.
    The unlit ground between the two attackers drew them forth. For Vesk, the darkness was a familiar field of killing and revelry, a place to contact the Lower Planes and bargain for the