Before taking Theseus into his arms, Karfhud hesitated and glanced down at his body. "What are you looking at? I see no pods!"

"Here."

Theseus tried to pluck a husk off the fiend's body. He might as well have tried to grab a bubble; the pod burst the instant his fingers touched it, and a fresh wave of golden ichor spilled down the tanar'ri's chest.

Karfhud hissed in pain, then glared at the Thrasson with yellow flames licking in the pupils of his maroon eyes. "Whatever you did, do not do it again!"

With that, the tanar'ri snatched the Thrasson into his arms and turned up the passage. Theseus smiled at his newfound weapon, then glanced over his own body and frowned. He still had twice as many pods as Karfhud, and all of them were black. Pains Of The Spirit

The fog drags across my face, coarse and sour as damp wool, heavy with the smell of blood and cleaved bone and entrails strewn across gray waters. The streets murmur with the sound of whimpering children and the rasp of tiny claws scraping raw bone, with the disbelieving groans of the slow and the foolish and the unlucky. The night air is cold for Sigil; my breath shoots yellow and steamy from my mouth, and from the tips of my steel halo depend crimson icicles.

I am disappointed-1 admit that, and freely-but only in myself, only in my failure to see what is obvious. The wine woman has been helping him all along: it was she who lured Tessali and his guards out of Rivergate, it was she who led him to Karfhud, and – though I need not tell you – it can only be the wine woman who revealed the pods to him. Wine has that power over men, I know; it makes clear to them what they otherwise do not see at all.

Still, I must ask you why.

Sympathy for the Thrasson, I understand. He is the Amnesian Hero, and ever are you mortals searching for heroes. But what of Poseidon? Is not aid to this battered castaway…

(Do not think me fool enough to call him Theseus, for well do I know the legend: how he was gotten on Aethra by two fathers at once, King Aegeus and the god Poseidon; how he found Aegeus's sandals and sword beneath a boulder and cleared the road of robbers as he walked to Athens to claim his birthright; how he narrowly escaped death at the poisoning hands of his father's jealous queen; how he sailed to the land of King Minos and, with the aid of the king's own daughter Ariadne, entered the labyrinth and slew the terrible Minotaur; how he forgot Ariadne on the isle of Naxos and in his distress neglected to signal his safe return, so grieving his father that the king threw himself off a cliff – a clever way to usurp a throne, was it not? How he bequeathed democracy upon his city… I know the whole legend, this and much more, so do not think to fool me into calling this addle-brained, hand-footed castaway Theseus!)

…aid to the King of Seas? If the Amnesian Hero and Theseus are the same, then is his mother not Aethra? Are the memories in the amphora not tme, and if true for him, then not also true for me? You must see where that will lead: back to the banks of the River Lethe, to the dark thieving waters and the question that must not be answered.

So I must ask again, did you send her, and why? Gray Waters

Bruised palm slapping stony ground and leg still throbbing from ankle to hip, the Thrasson hobbles through the rocky gorge as best he can, hissing his breath between clenched teeth and clutching his star-forged sword tightly in his hand. On all his companions he sees pods and ichor: green ooze dripping from Tessali's stumps, emerald and ruby husks throbbing on Jayk's shadowy breast, ebony slime and white blisters clinging everywhere to Silverwind, yellow hulls squeezing out beneath Karfhud's back-satchel, black burrs cleaving to his own breast. Despite his pain, despite all the pain clinging to his companions, he thinks of nothing but the fiend's bitter wine, of the wine woman's return, of folding her into his arms and…

First, there is a battle to win, an amphora to recover, memories to reclaim, a woman's name to recall, a fiend to fell, and maps to steal. After the victory, there will time for drinking and celebrating and lovemaking, the Thrasson is quite certain. To best a tanar'ri lord, to rescue a lost love, to escape the Lady's mazes, all in one day, all with a hand for a foot and only cripples and barmies for a war party, will be his greatest feat yet. The gods themselves will sing praises to the name of Theseus!

A hero's spirit, they say, never breaks.

But will it shatter?

Karfhud's pace has been slowing for some time, and now he has stopped before an irregular circle of darkness hanging on the side of the gorge. The blackened area could have been a cave, save for the scorch marks on the opposite wall of the passage. The fiend has furled his map, bent his arm around at that impossible angle and stuffed the roll into his satchel.

"Prepare yourselves," he said, pulling out an unmarked parchment. "We are entering Sheba's lair."

With that, the tanar'ri stepped into the mouth of the blackness. A tongue of flame lashed out to lick briefly at the gorge's opposite wall, then died away. Theseus moved forward, blocking the conjunction, and faced his remaining companions.

"This is your chance to escape the tanar'ri, my friends." Theseus ran an uneasy gaze over the pods on his companions' bodies, wondering if he could prevent the husks from bursting by sparing his friends the battle to come. "The fighting will begin soon, and then Karfhud will be too busy to come back for you."

"What about you, Zoombee?"

The question took Theseus by surprise. Since departing the iron maze, Jayk and Tessali had been hanging back together, quietly whispering back and forth so intensely they had nearly gotten lost several times. The Thrasson had assumed – perhaps even hoped – that the tiefling's crisis of faith had caused a transfer of affections. Apparently, the conversation had been less romantic than he imagined.

"For my own reasons, I'm as eager as the tanar'ri to kill the monster." Theseus raised his hand, displaying the gruesome face tattooed on his palm. "Besides, as long as I have this, the choice is not truly in my… hands."

Jayk stepped forward. "Then I am going too, Zoombee."

"It would be sa-" The Thrasson caught himself and did not say "safe," unsure how Jayk might react to the suggestion that she feared for her life. "It might be better to wait here."

The tiefling shook her head stubbornly. "My place is with you."

"And I certainly have no intention of letting you slip my thoughts again," said Silverwind. "You are the thread that will lead me out of here."

Theseus looked to Tessali, who now stood at the back of the line looking disgruntled and more than a little frightened.

"I have no intention of staying here alone, if that's what you're hoping. You'll just have to keep an eye out for me." The elf glanced at the Thrasson's feet. "After all, that's my hand you have there."

"As you wish." Theseus was addressing all three of his companions. "But don't be afraid to turn and run. It will be easier to kill the monster if I know you are safe."

Theseus raised his sword to a middle guard, then turned and leapt through the conjunction. There was no splash, and no ripples spreading across the silvery surface away from where he stood. The Thrasson simply found himself standing chest-deep in the cloudy gray waters of a narrow swamp channel, the fingers of his new foot curling into the silky mud bottom. A pearly fog lay upon the water like smoke, so thick that he could barely make out tangled webs of prop roots rising along the banks to support impenetrable thickets of vine-choked bog trees.

About four paces down the passage stood Karfhud, a black silhouette rising from the water like a great cypress. He was looking down one of the passages of a four-way intersection, holding his map in one hand and tracing a line upon its surface with a talon of the other. The air was still and hot, and so quiet Theseus could hear the rasp of the fiend's claw on the parchment.