Shogg’s Ford had more inns and tavernas than most places twice its size. It was somewhere to pass through, not somewhere to live. Here, in the uncertain territories not yet claimed by Darvezian’s Darkness, nor actively protected by the Light of Armes, the doors were open to travelers of all inclinations. A place for dark deals, for traitors and turncoats and mercenaries, thieves and opportunists, adventurers and prodigies. Left to her own devices Dion would never have come to Shogg’s Ford save at the head of a cleansing crusade, but she was unhappily aware that Lief, and probably Cyrene, would have been regulars at places like this, had she not given them a higher purpose. Just as she was aware that Lief had stolen some priceless eyeglasses from an alchemist or black market merchant to disguise their new companion. Compromises. Everything in this quest had become an exercise in compromise, and every compromise eroded the vaunted purity of her status as a priestess of Armes. And yet the quest was worth it, wasn’t it? One could compromise a great deal if it meant putting an end to Darvezian, surely?

Ends and means. Dion had known fellow servants of Armes who had followed that road one compromise too far. She had even brought some of them to justice herself.

I feel I lose my way. She could confide in nobody, seek reassurance from nowhere. Until they found themselves somewhere with a proper temple, she must be strong and certain to the others, no matter how sullied and unsure she felt in her heart.

Shogg’s Ford was a bustling den of villainy. The streets were alive with a mixture of men and Ghants, the slimy, greenish skins of the Arghul-born, the ratlike features of Reshers. The writ of Armes, brought back from the Divine Planes after the prophet’s ascension and return, had confirmed that only humanity was fit for the Light, and that those other manlike races were creatures of the Dark. Here, though, everything was gray. There were debased men and women who neither knew nor wanted Armes’s grace, and there were Ghants and others who, though vile, were not actively in the service of the Dark Lord. It was a hive of opportunism and vice.

Cyrene had secured them a room in a leaning shack of a place with a lower floor that was almost entirely given over to a thronging taproom, or possibly brothel or smoke den, or all three. Dion was bitterly tempted to simply turn in, blot out the horrors of the place with sleep, and hope for dreams of Light. Her work was not done, though. It seemed her work would never be done.

“We need intelligence about the movements of Darvezian’s forces,” she told the others. “With Isinglas under siege it sounds as though the armies of Darkness are starting the new stage of the war in earnest.”