Kai's Memories

Balmin stepped past them, laying his hand on the canvas. Beneath his fingers, figures in an ashy wasteland run for their lives from horrible, twisted monsters, their screams frozen forever in time.

“That’s Osmara’s plane,” he said, grim.

The look on his face, defeat and defiance, chilled her even then. She wouldn’t wish it on Nisse, much less him.

Even the painting reflected the horror of this place. The reality is even worse.

Every step she takes, she’s thinking of him. Her friend struggling through these ash storms, alone or with the other cursed ones, Larren and Nisse and whoever else is left. Hunted by daemons, ripped apart by monsters.

The nameless elf, his terrified, helpless expression, having died again and again and lost almost all of himself along the way.

The people laying in unnaturally still piles on the hard, damp floor not even fighting anymore. Nothing of them left at all.

Part of her understands now what Nisse must be thinking, how desperate she must be to save her friends from this fate. She would do anything to protect them, short perhaps of making a pact with an evil dragon god.

But then, if it were Dezzy and Alistair… Who knows what she would do?

It doesn’t matter. She’ll stop the Shadow Pact. She’ll save Balmin and Larren and all of them, even Nisse. And when the worst is over, she won’t let this be their fate.