She strode forth and kicked open the door, wondering mid-move whether it was locked. Thankfully it was not, and the portal slammed back with all the thunderous booming she could have wished, the sound reverberating across the vast, echoing throne room of the Dark Lord.

The Dark Throne was as great a symbol of evil as whoever sat in it, and also the main reason the ceilings were so high. It rose as tall as four men on each others’ shoulders, a splay of stone spines and barbs rising to a pair of ridged horns that curved together until, high in the upper shadows, they came within a thumb’s breadth of touching. The scale of the seat was such that it would have borne a giant easily enough. The figure sitting there was dwarfed by it. Darvezian had been a man once, after all, before he had become the master of the Dark.

His black robe was made of shadow more than cloth, depthless, textureless. Over it were odd fragments of armor, silver chased with more black: a single shoulder guard, gauntlets, a gorget. Every piece of metal was wrought into the shape of interlocking screaming faces, and they shimmered and trembled, impossibly pale no matter how red the light was.

There was a griffin skull atop the Dark Lord’s head as a kind of helm, the hooked beak curving down over his brow, the eye sockets set with rubies that glimmered with their own malevolent fire. They had names, those gems, and sagas of their own that listed the atrocities they had spurred their many owners on to. Beneath that beak the figure’s hood contained two burning orbs of scarlet fire.

It was all, Dion considered, good theater. No doubt it kept the Doomsayers and the Ghants in line. He was just a man, she reminded herself. She felt fear, of course, but she had long ago learned to be its master, not its servant.

“Darvezian!” and she was striding across the great vacant floor toward that throne.

“Who calls my name?” came a voice from the cowl. It was a surprisingly human voice, for all the pomp and dread grandeur, deep, rich, and deceptively pleasant. It was the sort of voice that would order men to their deaths and expect them to go willingly. It was, she guessed, the last thing remaining of the man Darvezian had been.

“All the world calls it,” Dion declared. “All your many victims cry it out, and demand justice!” Cyrene had an arrow to the string; Harathes had his shield up on her other side. Penthos was a little behind her, his hands dancing with fire that he was visibly restraining. Enth… Enth was there. He was there, and somewhere behind her. Should I have had the creature killed? Is this what will doom the world, my inadequate resolve; the unwillingness of some of my friends to squash a spider? Too late now to wonder.