His captors half-dragged, half-threw the false Omentus into the crystal chamber. One of them called out, but not loudly, “We’ve captured the intruder.”

“Bring him before the crystal,” a cold and stern feminine voice replied.

Omentus, through his scrying mirror, could see everything. In fact, his vision was far better than normal, except for the strain it put on his mind, of seeing in so many ways at once. Everything was still hidden by the thousands of colorful petals fluttering through the air, so it was all still limned in green fire by his ring. The mirror displayed things as if they were lit, so he could see things in remarkable detail. Furthermore, his recent infusion of drow blood to his body enabled him to see the heat of whatever was visible.

Still looking into the mirror, he began to trace a cancellation shape onto the table. It was a triangle bedecked with runes, arcs and lines that went in different directions, with a similar pentagon laid across it. To Omentus, it represented a particular spell.

In the image, Omentus was being forced to his knees before a jet-skinned woman who was mostly obscured by flying petals and leaves. “This is what your trespass has brought you to, foolish creature. This is what you get for crossing the favored of Lloth,” she told him. She took an adamantite rapier out of its sheath, from one of the males that flanked her. “I only wish I had a way to kill you a thousand times.”

The man in front of her fought against the drow holding him down, when a third drow struck him on the back of the head with the pommel of a halberd. He stopped struggling, but was still conscious.

The priestess standing in front of him smirked. “Any last words?” she asked him, baiting the man. As he opened his mouth to speak, she slashed to tip of the blade across his neck.

Omentus struck a line through the shape on the table. Far away, the entire mass of petals and leaves buckled and began to twist.

The drow did not hesitate. She plunged the rapier’s blade through the man’s heart. He coughed blood, looking down at the weapon in shock. Some of the petals bulged, others half-withered. Most of them began to glow, giving off different hues of pale light from one another. As if in a silent breeze, the petals and leaves in the air churned violently, and the air pressure changed. It was like a novice had cut off a spell before its time, or like the caster of a spell not independent from his work were dying.

“I didn’t think so,” the drow woman said. She turned to walk away from him, back to the task of managing the dark crystal’s progress.

Still kneeling between the two drow males, the man sputtered and spat blood from his mouth. “Hey!” he cried, catching the priestess’s attention. With obvious pain, he went, even as she looked back at him, “This happens to us all, someday. Not even your – especially not your – goddess can save you from that.”

The woman’s face contorted in rage; her features reliefed horrifically in the light of the failing spell. She reached to the hip of a soldier beside her, and drew out his axe. She heft it high into the air and grabbed it by the haft as she brought it down, cleaving the man’s head in two, burying the blade of the axe as far down as his nose. The spell cut out instantly, the petals and leaves turning white and shrinking away into nothing in a flash of light. The air shifted enough to make a person quease – two of the drow in the chamber even vomited from the sensation. Omentus was sure that there were others out there who had reacted in just the same way.

The drow that had brought the man into the chamber began to haul him away, without removing either of the weapons from his body. “No.” the priestess barked at them, “Leave it there. In case anyone else wants to know what happens to his ilk.”