Warmth shot from his shoulder to his crystalline fingertips, a blaze of sensation where before he had felt only vague dullness. The arm fused more fully to him, spiking with sensation as never before, transmitting the sense of touch in a way he had not felt in all the seven years he'd worn it, since the mining accident. But he was still blacking out. Warian reached up with his artificial limb, grabbed Yasha's forearm that held his neck in a vice, and pulled. A shape flew through the air and smashed into the far wall. It took Warian a moment to realize that the shape, now crumpled and unmoving on the floor, was Yasha. Lavender luminance lit the faces of stunned tavern patrons as they stared at him with wide eyes. The light in their eyes reflected the glow that pulsed and rippled out of Warian's crystal arm. "What the…?" said Warian, looking at his prosthesis with eyes as wide as any of those in the bar. Bui the Hog, still in the grasp of her drunken belligerence, and still holding her improvised club, struck at Warian again. Her swing was strong but lacked its former deadly speed.

In fact, Warian realized, everyone in the bar seemed to be slowed, as if the light from his arm had encased them all in a syrupy dimension of sluggishness. Or was the light propelling him forward into a faster plane of perception? Warian swayed his body to be just outside the arc of Bui's swing. Bui moved in, assayed another brutal swing. Instead of stepping out of the way this time, Warian backhanded the oncoming wooden club with his prosthesis. The impact splintered the chair leg as it blasted out of Bui's hand. The woman remained fully in the clutch of her rage. She lunged forward, trying to catch Warian in her reddened, vein-popped hands. Warian ducked beneath her lunge. Again.

And again. Wishing to end it, Warian stood his ground for Bui's next lunge. As she rushed him, he reached out to tap her on the forehead-he was coming to understand that the strength and speed in his arm could be a deadly combination. Still, the impact was enough to tumble Bui to the ground, her head reeling. Surveying the remainder of the tavern customers, Warian saw the dislike directed at him from the bar had transformed into fear. "Don't worry…" he began as the light in his prosthesis guttered out. The dull nothingness of the last seven years flooded back into the crystal, and his supernatural perception evaporated. He sagged against a table but caught himself before falling to the floor. He didn't want to advertise that the freak display of energy had dissipated, draining away as inexplicably as it had energized him. More than that-weariness enveloped him as if he'd just run full out for a great distance. He couldn't get enough air, his legs and arms wanted to cramp, and exhaustion made him tremble.

Warian had to get out of the tavern while the onlookers remained cowed. He stumbled back to the table where his card game had been interrupted. Shem backed away. With careful nonchalance, Warian slid the contents of the pot to his pouch. He looked at Shem. "I would have won anyway, if not for the distraction. I had a Bahamut in my hand."

So saying, Warian revealed the stern visage of the dragon and its thirteen points. With a shrug, he threw the card in with the rest of the coins. "It seems like a reasonable recompense for the transgression against my person. No harm done, I say." Shem nodded quickly, fearfully. "Right, right-no harm done!" Warian turned toward the exit. A few patrons gathered around Yasha. One crouched, saying,

"Yasha? You still with us?" Warian's feet propelled him from the tavern before he could discover Yasha's fate. He didn't want to know, especially if… well, he didn't want to know.

Warian Datharathi rode east down the trade road on a newly purchased and outfitted horse the stableman had called Majeed. He rode south, rather than north toward Delzimmer. He traveled toward the port city of Cathyr, where he could catch a courier ship up the coast all the way to the Golden Water. Then, on to Vaelan. The answers to his questions lay in Vaelan. Despite his past vows, the time had come to return to the family business. Datharathi Minerals stood for all the rules and family expectations he'd left behind when he'd fled five years ago. He didn't have a head for business, or a desire to acquire one. All the scheming between businesses to get the absolute best price on every wooden nail; the constant worry about whether Datharathi Minerals could retain its high standing from year to year; the making of less-than-honest deals with other businesses, trade guilds, and private regulatory councils, in pursuit of the almighty coin… it all turned Warian's stomach. He had his own way of making a living-gambling. Well, he supposed that some folk might see a parallel. But everyone knew the risks when they sat down at a table for a game of chance. In business, the risks were mostly those raised by underhanded dealings. Warian sighed and patted Majeed. He didn't want to return home, but something terrifyingly strange had happened with his artificial arm, the arm that had been a gift from his family.

The prosthesis was carved from crystal mined from a secret lode that Datharathi Minerals jealously guarded. The proprietary crystal had an affinity for taking enchantment. The family business had made a handsome profit by selling small quantities of the substance to powerful and rich nobles and merchants in Vaelan and beyond. To Warian's knowledge, no piece of so-called Datharathi crystal had ever before exhibited as startling a transformation as what had happened to him in the tavern. Warian sighed as he weighed his decision. After he had lost his arm in a rock fall while inspecting one of the family mines, his will to fly in the face of family demands temporarily crumbled. The trauma of losing a limb shattered his confidence.

Against his better judgment, he allowed Grandfather Shaddon to give him an experimental prosthesis. To Warian's surprise, the false limb, the first of its kind, served him well, almost as well as a real arm.

Accepting the prosthesis was the only time he'd done as his family asked and found that the result was good. Warian had been so overcome with relief after receiving the arm that he almost changed his mind about the business, and nearly accepted a position under his Uncle Xaemar, who sat at the head of the family council. If not for his sister Eined, who talked sense into him, Warian might have been sitting on the family council at that very moment. After conferring with Eined late into many nights, Warian had skipped town. Eined had convinced her kid brother that he needed to see what the world was all about before becoming another cog in the Datharathi empire, however highly placed. Thank the gods for Eined's counsel. Free of Uncle Xaemar's decrees, Grandfather Shaddon's schemes, Uncle Zel's unscrupulous deals, and Aunt Sevaera's crazy impositions, Warian realized life was a far more wonderful and wide stage than he'd previously imagined. Eventually, he cut his ties with the family permanently. He never returned to Vaelan. In all the time since, the only thing he'd missed was Eined. Warian shuddered. And now someone lay hurt, maybe even dead, because of his arm. Had he killed Yasha?

He'd never before taken a life. For a moment, he comforted himself with something his old sword instructor had told him: To kill a person is far more difficult than is commonly believed. But what about when mortal strength was overcome by crazy bursts of potency and perception? "Why did you wake up?" Warian addressed his arm, as he had done before. His prosthesis remained dull and barely responsive, offering no clues. He tried to will it back to life, yet nothing happened, as if nothing had ever happened. All his attempts to elicit a response from his arm since he'd fled the tavern had proven equally fruitless. "It must be something they're experimenting with back in Vaelan," Warian murmured. Something he needed to know about, and soon.