What was going on outside? he wondered. Where was Bennett? Where was Arak Hawkeye, head of the Order of the Crown? Where was Huma? Rennard? Where…

He cursed the one who traveled in the darkness as he realized with a jolt that some of the men he was waiting for were long dead. There were others, though…

“Contemplating your mortality, Grand Master?” a voice like a hiss asked him suddenly.

Oswal was well beyond the point of being startled when he manifested himself. “Come out from behind me, coward.”

A blur of darkness formed before the throne of the Grand Master, but none of the guards noticed. “Are you blind?” he wanted to scream at them. “The enemy is before you!”

The other knights continued to stare without reaction. They were caught in a bizarre world of fanaticism in which the performance of their duties was all they existed for. They were being the best, most alert sentries that they could possibly be, yet they could not see the figure cloaked in shadows.

Oswal refused to consider the possibility that it might be himself who was mad, and that the one before him did not, in truth, exist anywhere but in the Grand Master’s mind.

“Shall I tell you what this day will bring?” the shadow mocked him. “Would you like to know what new atrocities are being performed in the name of Paladine and the Knights of Solamnia?”

It was a game he played each day at some point. Lord Oswal trembled in growing rage and uncertainty. Solamnia was in ruins. The knights were plundering the very people they were supposed to protect. Former allies were now hunted enemies.

All at the Grand Master’s command.

“You can tell me nothing new, mage, and I will tell you nothing new, either.” He said the last with some satisfaction. He could no longer summon up the strength to fully utilize the gifts of Paladine with which he, as a cleric and a Lord Knight, was endowed. How had that come about?

“I can save your people from your madnessssss.” Oswal had struck a nerve. “You merely have to tell me a few simple things. The longer you delay, the worse you make your own position. Do you know that your keep lies open, defenseless, and that other than the few men you have here, there are only two or three dozen remaining in all of Vingaard?” The shadow chuckled. “Soon the Knights of Solamnia will cease to exist, and all for naught.”

‘To the Abyss with you!” the Grand Master shouted as he rose from his throne. The knights guarding the chamber turned to look at him fleetingly, but noting that nothing was apparently wrong, they turned back to their “duties.”

“If you could take what you wanted, you would have taken it long ago! I have seen it in a vision! Paladine has guided me from the first! It is only a matter of outlasting you, specter! Your own time is limited! I will prevail!”

“You will do nothing. You are impotent, Grand Master. Shall I tell you a secret? Ssssoon, very ssssoon, what I want will be mine.”

“Takhisis take your murky hide!” Oswal slumped back onto the throne.

“She already hasss, asss you can sseee…” The shadow began to fade into nothing, but not before the Grand Master was allowed a glimpse of a face. It was a human face, but only barely, for the hair lay flat against the skull and the face was overly elongated, like that of some reptile. The skin added to the effect, showing a layer of scale or scab. It was hard to tell which.

Long after the shade had vanished, if indeed it had ever been there, he finally succeeded in whispering the name that accompanied that horrid, less-than-human visage.

“Dracos!”

The light of day was fading swiftly. Around the Grand Master’s stronghold, Kaz and the others saw the few remaining knights of Vingaard Keep begin what seemed to be automatic rituals. With slow deliberation, a group of some three or four passed among the others, lighting and distributing torches to each. Their pace never faltered, yet never varied, either. Kaz was reminded of folktales about the undead shambling out of their graves. Beside him, Darius watched, his hands clutching the base of the window, his knuckles white. The knights, once all were equipped with burning torches, shifted into a protective shield around the entrance of the building, each man facing the darkness without. Neither the minotaur nor Darius had seen any visible threat. It was almost as if the knights were seeking to hold back the coming darkness. The bell rang its single note for at least the thirteenth time today, though Kaz had lost count.

“How long can this go on?” he muttered.

Vingaard Keep, Kaz mused, was like a limbo of some sort, an unreal place, where everything seemed to slow down, seemed never really to change. There were no conclusions here, just one perpetual emptiness. The knights changed guard several times during the day, but they did nothing else. A few wandered briefly along the walls of the keep, supposedly on sentry duty, but Kaz knew that an enemy horde could stroll in undetected.

“What are we waiting for?” he groused at his companions. Darius nodded agreement with that sentiment. He was all for making some grand plan. The minotaur grimaced slightly. Darius was a good, brave soul, as humans went, but like many of his fellow knights, he seemed to think that what was called for was a glorious attack straight into the teeth of danger. Kaz knew that he himself was guilty of overzealousness at times, but experience had mellowed him somewhat.

Tesela was quiet. She sat on the floor, legs crossed, eyes closed. Kaz could not say for certain whether she was performing some ritual or was just plain bored, like he was. He suspected that she herself was not quite certain what to do.

Sensing his eyes on her, she opened her own and met his gaze. Something was troubling her, the minotaur felt instinctively. “What’s wrong?”

The cleric shook her head. “I can’t really say. I’ve been trying to clear my mind and have been asking Mishakal for guidance all day, but I still can’t determine what it is that disturbs me… only that it concerns Argaen.”

“The elf?” Darius grumbled.

“I’ve prayed to Mishakal for guidance, but where the elf is concerned, I feel nothing. It’s as if there is a-a blockage.”

“And your goddess is not strong enough to remove the obstacles?”

Her glare burned holes into the knight’s eyes, making him turn red. “I don’t snap my fingers and have every request taken care of instantly, Knight of Solamnial Mishakal, like all the other gods, has concerns that go beyond mortal ken. I am not her sole concern, though I feel her love. There may be a hundred different reasons why I can’t see what I want to see. For that matter, where is your Paladine? Why has he not helped his own people?”

Kaz, perhaps the only one of the party who had ever actually met a god-unfortunately, it had been Takhisis-smiled slightly. Gods, in his opinion, had more limitations than people imagined.

Rising from the chair where he had sat polishing his axe and trying to figure out some way to repair the one chipped edge, the minotaur stalked slowly toward the window. Other than the wind and an occasional sounding by the bell, things had been too quiet. On the night they had come here, dark, otherworldly things had been manifest. Now, save for the emptiness and the perpetual cloud cover, things were almost… ordinary.

Kaz did not like that one bit. In his experience, when things turned calm and ordinary, something unusual was about to happen.

“It’s almost as if we’re waiting for a signal,” the minotaur whispered to himself.

“What’s that?” Tesela called.

“Nothing. A whole lot of nothing, it seems.”

“Ah! There you are!” Argaen came stomping in as if he had been searching the entire library for them. The elf always seemed to be at least a little astonished that they were still here, which made Kaz uneasy. It was as if they were temporary diversions from his normal scheme of things and one day would simply cease to exist. No doubt, then Argaen Ravenshadow would probably forget they had ever been here.