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.Azriim hissed, took a wild swing with his blade, and staggered backward while trying to cover his ears.Riven bounded after him, driving the slaad back a few more paces with a flurry of two-handed slashes.Abruptly, he broke off the attack and retreated to his lost saber.He wedged his boot toe under it and flipped it up to his hand.He decided then to show the slaad another gift granted him by the Shadowlord.Holding both blades before him, he intoned a prayer to Mask, asking for divine power to fuel his blows.When he completed the prayer, both of his sabers hummed in his hands with unholy energy; both leaked shadow.He advanced on Azriim, who shook his head to clear it of the damage caused by the Dark Speech."I did not know we were exchanging repartee," the slaad said as he parried a series of Riven's slashes."I've a word or two for you, also."With that, the slaad pronounced a word of power and Riven's world went dark.Azriim's spell blinded him.He cursed and backed off several steps, his blades held before him.He tried to picture the corridor in his mind; he thought it perhaps eight paces wide, the slaad four or five paces before him."Having trouble with that eye?" Azriim said, laughing, still at a distance.*****Dolgan writhed like a mad thing, clawed frantically at Cale's hands.Desperate, the slaad spoke an arcane word and a clashing rainbow of magic exploded around him and Cale, slamming into both of them, firing in all directions.The chaotic play of colors made Magadon's head ache.The shadows around Cale's body absorbed the beams that would have hit him, leaving the spell with no visible effect.Cale gritted his teeth and strained.Veins rose on his arms.He leaned into his work.To Magadon's astonishment, the slaad's strength seemed to be no match for Cale.Cale's thumbs sank deeper into the slaad's eye sockets."This.is.for.Jak!" Cale snarled.Dolgan's eyelids gave way and he screamed as the orbs popped.Pink fluid poured from the sockets.The scream turned into a high-pitched wail of agony.He kicked, flailed.Cale slammed the slaad's head against the ground as he drove his thumbs all the way into the creature's skull, deep into the brain.Dolgan's screams became a slobbery gargle, then stopped.Cale rapped the slaad's bloody head into the stone twice more.The skull cracked and opened.Black blood pooled on the rock.Cale sat atop the dead slaad, clutching Dolgan's skull in his bloody hands, breathing hard."For Jak," he said.He pulled his gore-soaked thumbs from the eye sockets with a wet, sucking sound and stood over his kill.He looked at his bloody hands in surprise, as if they were not his own.Shadows covered him, swirled about him like a cloak in a gale.Cale knelt and retrieved something from the ground--his mask.He donned it, drew Weaveshear, decapitated the slaad, and held the severed head in his hands.Then he chanted a prayer over Dolgan's corpse.When he pronounced the final syllable, a column of flame whooshed into being over the slaad, consuming his body.The fire lasted only an instant, but it left nothing but ashes and the smell of burned flesh in its wake.The slaad would not be regenerating."Erevis," Magadon called.His voice was soft but Cale heard him and turned.His eyes glowed yellow through the black, featureless velvet of his mask.The eyes narrowed.Cale brandished Weaveshear and advanced toward Magadon.*****Riven had often fought in total darkness but he did not want the slaad to know that.He put his back to a wall to narrow the field of approach and focused on his hearing.Trying to make Azriim incautious, he feigned a stumble, an unassertive wave of his charged blades.Azriim did not take the bait.Riven could not even hear the slaad's breath.He knew the creature was picking his spot.Riven kept his blades up, ready.He was sweating.He heard a sizzling sound a fraction of a heartbeat before a bolt of lightning slammed into his chest, melted flesh, and drove him so hard against the wall that several ribs snapped.His breath went out of him and he sank to the floor.The hallway fell silent
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