In moments they had pushed forward to the door of the torture cell, Lief to open it, Harathes to bound through it, Cyrene to back him up. Dion and Penthos were ready to deal with any supernatural threat, although Penthos claimed there was nothing much of a magical nature behind the door. Of course Penthos’s “nothing much” could be another man’s arcane arsenal.

Enth himself was standing by the table, looking at the two bodies as though trying to work out what had gone wrong with them and whether it could be fixed. He reached out a finger and prodded the arrow-struck man in the temple thoughtfully, turning the angle of the man’s head from quizzical to incredulous.

Dion shook herself. Time to worry about the man-spider later.

She nodded. Lief threw open the now-unlocked door, and Harathes barrelled in.

A male voice from inside yelled out, “Don’t you clowns have anything better—oh, fuck!” and then there was the sound of a shield and a skull coming into swift collision. Cyrene had her bowstring drawn back, but there was an awkward look on her face and she hadn’t loosed the arrow. Dion shouldered past her, disc upraised for ease of smiting, and took a look.

There were two people in there, a man and a woman, but even a first glance suggested that any torturing had been purely consensual. They were both stark naked and still semi-entwined on a bed, and Dion could not help noting the rapidly wilting credentials of the male party involved. Harathes had them at sword point, and the man was sporting the beginning of what promised to be a spectacular bruise across half his face.

Strewn about the floor were various articles of clothing, including a leather breastplate covered in what seemed to be stitched-together human faces, and a robe that swirled with dark mists. Doomsayers, then.

Stripped of their trappings, the pair of interrupted villains had little of evident evil about them. Harathes was making them keep their hands in view, and if either was a magician then any attempt at magic was likely to be brief. There was, as all could plainly see, nothing up their sleeves.

“No sign that anyone heard that ruckus,” Lief commented. “All right, what now?”

“Who the pits are you?” the woman Doomsayer got out.

“We are of the Light,” Dion told her sternly. “That’s all you need to know.”

“You’re mad. Darvezian will make your deaths last a thousand years!” her trysting companion added.

“And yours will be somewhat swifter, but we’ll all be just as dead at the end of it,” Cyrene pointed out, and drew back her string to the ear.

“Wait!” the man threw up his hands, and she shot him through the left one, pinning it artfully to the woodwork.