He found himself alone on the plateau just outside the entrance to Abazigal's lair. By the position of the sun, Abdel guessed he had been gone for several hours, though an entire night had passed in the Abyssal plane. All around him were the signs of a great battle. Abdel stood in the aftermath of Sarevok's confrontation with Abazigal's hoard.

  Along with Abazigal's decapitated form, half a dozen great dragon carcasses were strewn about the blood-soaked battlefield. Their corpses were scarred and disfigured by deep, ragged gashes from the blades forged onto Sarevok's arms and legs, or horribly gouged and gored by the terrible spikes jutting from the dark warrior's knees and elbows.

  Sarevok himself was gone. Scattered around the dragons' remains were bits and pieces of his armor, rent asunder by mighty talons, or charred and blackened by the fire and acid spewed forth from the jaws of Sarevok's enemies. At Abdel's feet lay the armored warrior's visored helm, cloven nearly in two. There was no sign of Sarevok's body.

  Abdel wasn't surprised. The victorious dragons would have devoured the flesh of their defeated foe—if there was even anything to devour. After his encounter with Jaheira's departing soul, Abdel couldn't help but wonder if Sarevok had been anything more than a suit of armor animated by a disembodied spirit. Whatever Sarevok might have been, man or ghost, the evidence of his grisly end was indisputable.

  The many fallen corpses of the serpent horde attested to the legendary battle Sarevok must have fought before he succumbed to their overwhelming numbers. Had Abdel's emotions not been purged from his heart by Jaheira's death, he might have shed a tear for Sarevok's noble sacrifice. His half brother had saved his life, slaying Abazigal and then standing alone against the dragons while Abdel had retreated into the safety of Bhaal's nether world.

  But Abdel had no more use for legendary heroics. In the bloody aftermath smeared across the plateau, Sarevok was still dead, and the dragons, bereft of their master, were gone.

  Yet Abdel lived. He shivered as a cold blast of wind swept across the plateau, and he realized he was naked, his clothes reduced to ashes by Abazigal's fiery magic. He scoured the battlefield, searching for anything to cover his exposed body. In the end, he was forced to strip the bloodstained robe from Abazigal's headless corpse.

  The loose-fitting garment barely came down to his knees, and his arms extended well past the cuffs of the sleeves. The hooded cowl was better than wandering around fully exposed. Armed only with the heavy broadsword he had salvaged from the carnage of Sarevok's final stand, Abdel began the long descent back to the mountain's base.

  He rested only briefly at the bottom before setting out toward Amkethran. He had only one goal: Find Melissan and demand she lead him to the rest of the Five so that he could extract gruesome vengeance for Jaheira's death.

  Based on the directions Melissan had given him, Abdel calculated that Amkethran was a tenday or more due west of the plateau where Abazigal had fallen. There, in the monastery of a man named Balthazar, Melissan and Imoen awaited his arrival. To get to them, Abdel had to pass through the southern arm of the Forest of Mir. Either that or journey several hundred miles to the north or south to circumvent the far reaching woods. Before they had parted ways at Saradush, Melissan had suggested Abdel take one of the longer, safer, routes and avoid the dangerous forest.

  It took Abdel less than a day to reach the eastern edge of the Forest of Mir. Beyond its western border lay Amkethran. Driven by the urgency of his need to spill the blood of the Five, Abdel never even considered taking the long way around. He plunged into the dense growth without a second thought.

  By the third day he was already regretting his decision. He had reached the Forest of Mir with no difficulty, but once inside the dark wood his progress had slowed to a crawl. Most of his time was spent ripping and tearing branches or smashing his way through thick, thorny underbrush. Abdel was lucky if he covered ten miles in a day. He was beginning to wonder if it would have been quicker to try and go around the almost impassable forest.

  At least the legendary lethal denizens of the Forest of Mir never bothered him. Abdel suspected the reports of their existence were highly exaggerated. Or perhaps Abdel's power had become so great that even the foul creatures hiding within the shadows instinctively knew to avoid a confrontation with the strange intruder to their world.

  Cursing his slow progress and his own stupid refusal to follow Melissan's advice, Abdel pressed onward through the dense trees.

  * * * * *

  Abazigal would fail. Sendai knew this, just as she knew the half-dragon's arrogance was nothing but a front to hide his true self, a simpering mongrel so disgusted with his own existence he sought salvation by trying to become something else entirely. The drow knew of the mage's ludicrous plan to unite the dragons of Faerun. She knew of his ridiculous dream of becoming a pure-blood wyrm, and she knew such a pathetic creature would be incapable of slaying Bhaal's avatar.

  Abdel Adrian would kill Abazigal, then would set off to reunite with his sniveling half sister at Amkethran, unaware that Sendai had already devoured the young woman's still-beating heart. Just as she would devour Abdel's own.

  She had ridden fast and far since murdering Imoen, traveling under cover of night and seeking shelter from the accursed sun during the day. She was anxious to reach the cover of the Forest of Mir before Abdel found his way through the dense woods. It was there beneath the comforting darkness of the thick branches that she wanted to set her ambush for the last remaining Bhaalspawn. Even so, it had taken her nearly four nights to reach the eastern edge and find the narrow, overgrown path she sought out.

  The road between Abazigal's enclave and Amkethran was little used, but Sendai suspected Abdel would find it. The trail, ill kept and treacherous as it was, provided the only viable path through the Forest of Mir's southern arm. If Abdel was heading directly from Abazigal's enclave in the Alimir Mountains toward Amkethran he was sure to stumble across this path at some point.

  Unaware of the events that had transpired at the monastery, Abdel would suspect nothing as he journeyed toward Amkethran. If all went as Sendai planned, he would charge headlong into her ambush. With Gorion's ward disposed of, she and Balthazar could then turn their attention to getting rid of Melissan.

  The drow worked quickly, littering the narrow forest path with snares and trip wires and making liberal use of her arsenal of poisons. She had chosen a spot several miles along the path, well within the dark confines of the Forest of Mir. Here the thick shadows cast by the tightly packed trees blocking out the sun made her work easier. Hiding her traps was often as simple as tossing a handful of dirt over the trigger or burying her work beneath a pile of deadfall.

  She spent nearly a full day setting her ambush, then retreated into the upper recesses of the branches that overhung the trail to wait for her prey.

  * * * * *

  Abdel couldn't even see the midday sun through the thick, overlapping growth of the trees that pressed in on him from all sides. The Forest of Mir was every bit as dense, dark, and foreboding as the legends had led Abdel to believe. Yesterday he had been fortunate enough to stumble across a path heading in the general direction of Amkethran.

  After three days of slow, plodding progress through the undergrowth, Abdel was determined to make up for lost time, but the pervasive gloom, even here on the path someone had blazed through the wood, still hampered his progress. As he raced along the narrow trail he was constantly tripping over roots hidden in the oppressive gloom.

  His eyes straining to pierce the darkness, Abdel never saw the trip wire stretched across his path. He felt the faint tug as his leg tore through the string, he heard the sharp snap of a spring uncoiling, and he felt the stinging bite as a dozen tiny darts pierced the thick cloth of his robe and embedded themselves in his right thigh.

  His leg went instantly numb, causing him to fall forward onto the small spikes hidden beneath a pile of leaves. A dozen tiny points jabbed through his cowl and into the flesh of his torso, and he felt the corrosive toxin coating the spikes as it began to dissolve his skin.

  He rolled to the side and ended up on his back, his hands frantically swatting at the circles of burning pain slowly spreading out from the puncture wounds in his chest and abdomen. He heard the crack of dry wood, and the ground disappeared beneath him.

  Abdel lashed out with a single hand and managed to grab the edge of the pit as he fell. For a second he simply dangled above the unseen bottom, imagining what atrocities lay in wait beneath him. He could faintly hear the clatter of the sticks and dry branches that had camouflaged the yawning trap as they struck the pit floor far below.

  He heaved himself up and out of the trap. He tried to stand, but his paralyzed leg gave way, and he staggered forward. The noose tightened around his left ankle, and snatched his good leg out from beneath him. Abdel found himself hanging upside down, the robe draping down to cover his head and face and exposing the rest of his body.

  As he struggled to tear the cowl off so he could see, his body was peppered with tiny jolts of pain. Dozens of darts from an unseen assailant buried themselves beneath his skin. Abdel felt his struggles growing weaker, his arms and shoulders growing as numb as his leg. Within seconds, he was unable to move at all. The robe slipped from his head and fell to the forest floor below.

  A slim figure in black dropped down from the branches above, landing lightly on the ground a few feet away. Even though he was looking at her upside down, Abdel could clearly see she had the sharp, pointed features of an elf. Her skin was the color of ash. He tried to mouth the word "drow," but the paralyzing poison from the darts still protruding from his body had rendered him completely immobile.

  The drow moved toward him and pulled a runed dagger from her belt. Abdel recognized the symbols—he had seen them on the axe of Yaga Shura and the arrows of Illasera. This dark elf was one of the Five.

  Abdel tried to swing himself around so he could cut himself down, but his muscles refused to respond. He couldn't even make his fingers twitch, he couldn't even scream out his frustration. One of the Five was less than ten feet away, and he could do nothing.

  Images of violence and unbridled savagery filled his mind. He envisioned himself ripping the thin elf limb from limb. He imagined his sword splitting her skull and spraying gray matter across the thick trunks of the nearby trees. He fantasized about slicing open her stomach and watching her clutch feebly at her guts as they spilled out and onto the forest underbrush. His imaginings aside, Abdel simply hung from the noose like meat on a hook, swaying slightly from side to side.

  With a quick swipe of her blade Abdel's captor cut him loose. His body dropped like a stone. Unable to even roll his shoulders to absorb his fall, Abdel slammed onto the ground, landing facedown.

  The fires of Bhaal's fury began to rise within Abdel's soul. Instead of quelling the flames as he had so often done, Abdel stoked the embers of hatred into an inferno of madness raging inside his impotent body.

  Crouching beside Abdel's motionless form, the drow rolled him over to stare into the eyes of her helpless victim.

  "Imoen shares your fate," she whispered, determined to deliver a cruel blow to Abdel's heart before she delivered the slash to his throat. "I killed her myself."

  Though his throat was frozen in silence, Abdel's mind screamed in protest. Not Imoen, too! Jaheira's death had ripped his soul bare. He thought the pain he felt from his lover's loss was infinite. But the knowledge that Imoen now lay dead as well, shredded new wounds in his spirit. The unbearable suffering—a pain within his heart greater than any physical injury he had ever sustained—grew even worse. Gorion, Jaheira, and Imoen. Their blood was on Abdel's hands.

  The drow continued to speak, but Abdel no longer even comprehended her words. Consumed by the burning darkness of Bhaal, the part of his being that was Abdel Adrian was gone. Only the vile essence of the Lord of Murder remained. As it had done once while under the spells of the sorcerer Irenicus, Abdel's body began to change. This time he urged it onward. His bones cracked, and his skin burst apart, unable to contain a skeleton four times the size of Abdel's own. His hands became claws, his head a hideous combination of mandibles and teeth. Two more arms exploded from his chest, their taloned fingers ripping and slashing at the air. His skin formed a hard, chitinous exoskeleton. The Ravager had been unleashed on Faerun once more.

  The transformation was instantaneous. Where Abdel had once been, only an abomination remained, lying prone on its back beneath the twisted branches overhead. Sendai leaped back in horrified surprise, her finely honed instincts for self preservation saving her from a quick and violent death.

  The drow didn't wait to see if the creature was mobile but vanished into the trees, fleeing for her life. It was too late for her. The thing that now lay on the forest floor was not a creature of the mortal world, it was not affected by the paralyzing toxins Sendai had pumped into Abdel's body, and it was much, much quicker than the drow.

  Sendai's lithe form flitted in and out among the thick trunks and sturdy branches of the trees. Her desperate flight was hampered by the dense woods, but if anything the enormous creature behind her would find its own progress even more difficult. The heavy forest growth would help hide her from the monster's sight as she fled without a sound.

  The Ravager didn't need to hear or see her to track her. It could smell her, as it could smell all living things. The great demon leaped up from the forest floor, smashing its head and shoulders through the canopy of leaves and twigs hanging in its path. It caught the drow's scent and bounded off in pursuit.

  While the drow was forced to weave in and out between the trees, the Ravager took a more direct route. Crashing through the undergrowth, it left a wide path of shattered stumps, uprooted trees and trampled vegetation in its wake. The horrendous thunder of its pursuit could be heard throughout the Forest of Mir, sending birds, game animals, and far more monstrous beasts scurrying for cover. The terrible din was only cut short by the shrieks of Sendai as the beast ran her down.

  The Ravager ripped Sendai apart with its four arms, bathing in her blood and reveling in her suffering as it tore her into tiny bits. The beast gorged itself on her spewing innards, then cast the drow's physical shell aside as it sensed the invisible essence of Bhaal that wafted up from the corpse like the scent of rotting evil.

  Abdel Adrian found himself in his human form again, standing once more in the Abyssal realm of Bhaal.

  * * * * *

  Balthazar sat motionless in the secret uppermost room of the monastery's central tower. It was nothing more than a tiny chamber completely surrounded by the thick marble of the tower's roof. There were no doors or windows, no physical entrances or exits whatsoever. Accessible only through the mystical passages of an enlightened mind, the room was Balthazar's inner sanctum, inviolate and impregnable. Even his own disciples were unable to enter—only he had mastered the mental discipline that enabled him to transport his physical body through solid rock and into the secluded meditation chamber.

  He needed no food or water. He did not even require air. His body had reached a state of purity, a state of awareness and existence far beyond the physical consciousness that bound all the world in chains they could not even see.

  Balthazar had already been in his hibernation chamber a full day before Melissan had arrived with the girl Imoen, though time had little meaning in his current state. He remained there while Sendai had slit the Bhaalspawn's throat and didn't move when Melissan made her escape. He was still there now, focusing his mind in preparation for the battle to come.

  From here, he could see and hear events across the entire continent: the secrets of Waterdeep nobles plotting in their high towers; the clandestine whispers of Amnian adulterers huddling beneath the sheets at a seedy inn; the laughter of Sembian commoners in a tavern; the prayers of a Daleland widower by his wife's grave. The screams of a dying drow in the Forest of Mir.

  They were only two now—Abdel and Balthazar, last of the Bhaalspawn. Soon there would be only one. Melissan had become inconsequential to their destiny. Bhaal's Anointed had become irrelevant. Melissan still had her part to play, but it was a minor role. She would send Abdel after Balthazar. They would fight. Balthazar would kill him. And this would all be over.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As he stood in the plane of the Abyss that had once been the home of Bhaal, Abdel could remember becoming the Ravager. He remembered the sensation of his body transforming, becoming the demon. He remembered rushing through the forest, hunting the fleeing drow. He remembered ripping into Sendai's soft, yielding form with his claws, the glorious taste of death on his teeth and tongue. The memories were distant and faint, as if they were not his own. He had not done those things. Abdel Adrian was not responsible for the bloody slaughter. It had been the Ravager.

  "But you unleashed the Ravager." The being that had confronted him in the past materialized before him once more, its infinite voice once again responding to thoughts he had not spoken aloud.

  Abdel ignored the creature before him and turned his attention to the doors that would lead him away from this place and back to the material plane where he could resume his quest to avenge Jaheira's death. There were only two doors now.

  "As you slay each of the Five, the potential fates of you and your kin become fewer."

  Interesting, but not interesting enough to keep Abdel from leaving.

  "Beware, Abdel Adrian," the annoying creature warned. "You risk losing yourself to the Ravager. It cannot be controlled. It will devour you from within even as it devours your enemies."

  The big sellsword spun to face the being preaching at him. "I don't care!" he spat in anger. "As long as it lets me kill the Five, I don't care what happens to me!"

  The being shook its glorious head. "Abdel, I fear for your future—and the future of Abeir-toril. There is so much you do not know. So much I would tell you, were it not forbidden by the power I serve."