Vhostym floated into a corner of the room and softly incanted a spell. A wave of invisible energy went forth from his outstretched hands. The magic hit the soldiers, one, then another, another, until all of them went rigid, immobilized by the power of the magic.

They were nothing more than statues of flesh waiting to die.

Shouts sounded from the other side of the closed double doors. Something slammed fruitlessly against the sealed door. Vhostym heard an invocation-one of the priests attempting to counter his locking spell. The attempt failed, of course.

A sudden wave of pain wracked Vhostym's body, sent a charge through his bones. Not an enemy's spell, but his disease. He hissed with pain.

Not now, he thought, and waited what seemed like an eternity for it to pass. When it did, he put it out of his mind and withdrew a small leather bag and a wax candle from his component pouch. He lit the candle with a mental command, tossed the bag to the floor amidst the immobilized soldiers, and cast a powerful summoning. The candle flame turned black as he spoke the words. He completed the summoning by pronouncing the name of the gelugon devil he was calling. "Emerge, Kostikus."

The candle flared out in his hand and the leather bag squirmed, expanded, opened like the mouth of a beast. The bag's opening became a gate, a portal to the Hells. Screams emerged from it, the agonized wails of tortured souls.

"What is happening in there?!" shouted a voice from behind the door.

The bag's mouth grew until it was as large as one of the tower's doors. A silhouette filled the opening.

Kostikus stepped forth.

At his appearance, ice crystallized on the floor and walls of the room. Warded and incorporeal, Vhostym did not feel the cold radiated by the fiend.

The ice devil towered so high he had to duck to step out of the gate. His head nearly touched the ceiling of the room. Skin the color of old parchment wrapped a hairless head that looked like an exposed skull. Bow legs and overlong arms jutted from a thin, humanoid frame. The devil was naked. In one hand it held a spear as long as Vhostym was tall.

Vhostym knew that devils could see invisible creatures. Kostikus looked around the room until his gaze settled on Vhostym. The black holes of the creature's eyes flashed recognition. And fear. Vhostym could have annihilated the powerful devil within moments and Kostikus knew it.

"How may I serve?" Kostikus asked, nodding his head in a bow. The devil's voice sounded brittle and his respiration formed clouds in the air.

Vhostym indicated the immobilized soldiers and projected, Kill all of these where they stand and return to your Hell.

Vhostym did not want to waste time killing each of the soldiers himself. Besides, he took no pleasure in killing. For him, murder was a purely utilitarian exercise. He needed the tower empty and he wanted no survivors with loose tongues spreading the tale of its destruction.

The devil seemed surprised at the simplicity of the request but asked no further questions. Presently the towering fiend set to his work. His spear pierced the flesh and organs of one of the soldiers, then another. The devil laughed as he killed-a high pitched sound like the squeal of a delighted child.

More shouts from behind the door, then silence.

Vhostym turned his back to the gleeful fiend and cast another spell, summoning to his side a sphere of nothingness an arm's span in diameter. The void sphere would disintegrate whatever it touched. Another spell summoned a magical eye that, like Vhostym's incorporeal body, could travel through solid objects and project his vision whither it went.

Vhostym sent the eye, invisible to all but him, through the sealed door and into the room beyond. He transferred his vision to the sensor and saw the stairway and main corridor on the other side of the doors crowded with defenders. Few were fully armed or armored, and many still wore nightclothes. They must have poured out of their bedrooms at the sound of the alarm. Perhaps two score soldiers, three of the temple's priests, and two wizards waited there. All of them stood ready, the priests in front with their silver holy symbols in one hand and their blades in the other. Magical wards, visible as distortions in the air, shielded both of the wizards, who flanked the priests. Both held wands at the ready.

They were hoping to ambush Vhostym the moment he walked through the door.

Vhostym turned his sight from the sensor back to his body. With the devil still impaling soldiers behind him, he spoke the words to a powerful evocation, infusing some of his mental strength into the spell to maximize its effect. Just before he pronounced the final phrase, he mentally commanded the void sphere to touch the door. It did and the wooden slab disintegrated instantly into dust.

Vhostym completed his spell at the same moment the wizards beyond fired their wands through the door.

Energy streamed forth from Vhostym's hands, saturating the room beyond, and the tower's defenders began to scream. But not before a ball of flame, a bolt of lightning, and a wave of negative energy streaked through the door.

The flames, lightning, and life-draining energy passed through Vhostym's incorporeal form without harm or dissipated into nothingness on his wards. Only the flames from the ball of fire reached Kostikus, and the devil, immune to fire and heat by virtue of his fiendish flesh, stood in the midst of the inferno and laughed.

In the room beyond, the high-pitched, agonized screams of the defenders rose to a crescendo and ceased. A wet gurgle sounded for a moment, then nothing.

Vhostym floated through the doorway and into the room beyond.

From behind, the now euphoric fiend shouted, "Roasted manflesh!" and impaled a partially immolated soldier on his spear. The smoke from burning flesh chased Vhostym through the doors.

Every living creature within the room lay dead. Many were scattered over the stairs, but most lay in a heap on the floor of the main corridor. Vhostym's spell had left the corpses thin, pruned, desiccated. Night clothes and piecemeal armor hung from the dead as if they were skeletons. A layer of cloudy, pinkish water soaked the stairs and the floor. Vhostym's magic had sucked the water from all his victims' bodies, drawn it through their eyes, ears, their very flesh, and left little more than husks.

Vhostym started to float upward but remembered that he needed to kill the prisoners the Cyricists kept in cells below the tower. Leaving behind for the moment his magical sensor and his void orb, he floated down through the now-empty first floor to the dungeon level, blind for a moment until he reached the open space of one of the dungeon's hallways. Numerous cells and several torture chambers filled the level. Moans and whimpering sounded from down the hall.

Vhostym would put them out of their misery.

He took a small black pearl from his component pouch, weakened it with his mind, and crumbled it between his fingers. As he cast the fine powder before him, he recited the words to a necromancy spell whose power snuffed out all life forces but his own within thirty paces in any direction.

One of the prisoners must have heard him pronouncing the spell.

"Help us," the man cried, his voice plaintive and broken.

Vhostym finished the spell. The moment it took effect, the dungeon fell silent. Vhostym glided down the hallway, looking from side to side, and saw naught but corpses, all of them of prisoners. They had died instantly and painlessly, better than their captors. He floated up through the ceiling.

Nothing moved on the second floor. Vhostym was alone with the dried corpses. Kostikus was gone, as were the bodies of the soldiers Vhostym had immobilized. Vhostym had as yet seen only a few mages and priests. He assumed the temple's remaining forces had realized that they were trapped within the tower and were organizing a stand on one of the upper floors. Probably they had assembled around Olma, the highest ranking priestess in residence, perhaps in the sanctum itself. Vhostym would get to them soon enough.